each time that I have run away - and from a habit it quickly became an illness - I have betrayed someone. Myself, but not always only myself.

To reject censorship after studying the risks involved is very well. To reject it ex cathedra, in the tones of Calvin pronouncing a dogma, eyes and mind closed to the possible consequences, the even marginally possible, is to make things too comfortable for oneself.

Hope is a talent like any other.

The strangest thing about life is not its frightful cruelty, but that it can be gentle.

The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

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 truth is exactly that which can't be got into words. We are forced to lie, a little or, if we are inferior, much.