Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

The past is able to close round certain moments, as if they were seeds, and deliver them again fresh and living in the present.

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.

Hope is a talent like any other.

If you think with enough energy about a hoped-for event, it will in the end happen. Not because you willed it. Because it was all the time in your nature.

Women will always put persons above ideas ... and so they'll always be defeated. Persons die, and ideas rule the world.