he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour.

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.

The mind of a little child is fascinating, for it looks on old things with new eyes-but at about twelve this changes. The adolescent offers nothing, can do nothing, say nothing that the adult cannot do better.

At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon.

I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone. I didn’t want to see any people at all. I had seen so many people all my life -- I was an average mixer, but more than average in a tendency to identify myself, my ideas, my destiny, with those of all classes that came in contact with. I was always saving or being saved -- in a single morning I would go through the emotions ascribable to Wellington at Waterloo. I lived in a world of inscrutable hostiles and inalienable friends and supporters.