A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.

Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.