And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

...she had always known under her mind and now she confessed it: her agony had been, half of it, because one day he would say farewell to her, like that, with the inflexion of a verb. As, just occasionally, using the word 'we' - and perhaps without intention - he had let her know that he loved her.

It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.

I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.