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

Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit.

That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.

I am infinitely strange to myself.

It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.

Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?