A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.

The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that - how to express this - you really must make the self.

Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.