To reconceive the Christ! It is the special task of our age.

Nothing ought to be told, I think that does not interest or kindle one's own mind in looking back; it is the only condition on which one can hope to interest or kindle other minds.

The thoughts and opinions of one human being, if they are sincere, must always have an interest for some other human beings. The world is there to think about; and if we have lived, or are living, with any sort of energy, we must have thought about it, and about ourselves in relation to it - thought 'furiously' often. And it is out of the many 'thinkings' of many folk, strong or weak, dull or far-ranging, that thought itself grows.

It is the rank and file - the average woman - for whom the world has opened up so astonishingly.

It became plain very soon after our marriage that ours was to be a literary partnership.

There is a tyrannical element in all fanaticism, an element which makes opposition a torment.

In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.