What's wrong with this egotism? If a man doesn't delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?

When a man publishes a book, there are so many stupid things said that he declares he'll never do it again. The praise is almost always worse than the criticism.

It is all right you're saying you do not need other people, but there are a lot of people who need you.

I think that those of us who are what are called intellectuals make a terrible mistake in overvaluing the yen we have for the arts, books, etc. There is a sweet, fine quality in life that has nothing to do with this, and more and more I find myself valuing myself with those people.

What is to be got at to make the air sweet, the ground good under the feet, can only be got at by failure, trial, again and again and again failure.

Her thoughts ran away to her girlhood with its passionate longing for adventure and she remembered the arms of men that had held her when adventure was a possible thing for her. Particularly she remembered one who had for a time been her lover and who in the moment of his passion had cried out to her more than a hundred times, saying the same words madly over and over: "You dear! You dear! You lovely dear!" The words, she thought, expressed something she would have liked to have achieved in life.

The writer, an old man with a white moustache, had some difficulty getting into bed.