one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.

It is not possible that a just God should forgive people who are wicked because another person who was good endured agony by being nailed to a cross.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.

If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.

It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.

My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it. ... I think your hand concentrates for you. I don't know why it should be so.