Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.

One of my latest sensations was going to Lady Airlie's to hear Browning read his own poems - with the comport of finding that, at least, if you don't understand them, he himself apparently understands them even less. He read them as if he hated them and would like to bite them to pieces.

I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose." said Isabel

We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.

The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant - no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.

Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.

Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!