My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous — or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity.

He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw upon each other; to his mind one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart.

I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.

To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.

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.