A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

It is the impulse of our century, with its nearly religious belief in magnitude, to fling an institution into every void.

Madness might sometimes give access to a kind of knowledge. But was not a guarantee.

I wasn't convinced a shop girl would know the word 'Oedipal.

... one doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake.

In England, life is a long process of composing oneself.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.