And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

If two people loved, they slept together; it was a mathematical formula, tested and proved by human experience.

It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.