when you think you've got hold of a genius ... you can't be sure whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan.

For with him the phantoms of the mind (which to the average man are merely phantoms) projected themselves with a bodily vividness and violence. Not only had they the colour and authority of accomplished fact, they were invested with an immortality denied to facts.

And I wasn't a journalist any more than I was a trained nurse.

if you don't believe in yourself, you'll have some difficulty in making other people believe in you.

Knowing reality is knowing that you can't lose it.

The War will leave none of us as it found us.

At the moment you are no longer an observing, reflecting being; you have ceased to be aware of yourself; you exist only in that quiet, steady thrill that is so unlike any excitement that you have ever known.