Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.

It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leporous.

The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.