The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage.

The best way of forgetting how you think you feel is to concentrate on what you know you know.

The place for truth is not in the facts of a novel; it is in the feelings.

It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength.

There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.

There are such people, unfortunates who have to be angry before they can feel alive. I had sometimes wondered if it were some old relic of pagan superstition, the fear of risking the jealousy and anger of the gods, that made such people afraid of even small happinesses. Or perhaps it was only that tragedy is more self-important than laughter.

the difficult art I was attempting had, indeed a powerful fascination, before which the past faded, the future receded, and the whole of experience narrowed down to this stretch of glancing, glimmering water, and the fly I was trying to cast across it.