Ideas are, in truth, force.

Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.

All intimacies are based on differences.

The fatal futility of Fact.

To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.

The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life - that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience.

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.