What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.

Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.