I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.

You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.

There cannot be any true leisure until all the world possesses it equally.

...all cynicism masks a failure to cope.

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.