Writing was a chimney for my blazing ambitions.

Not literature alone, but society itself is wormed and rotten when language ceases to be respected not merely by advertisers and politicians, but by persons of learning and authority.

Novelists who treat violence and cruelty as something to be exploited for their effect, or to enjoy the pleasure of an evacuation, are carriers of a singularly unpleasant disease.

I am persuaded that not a novel in ten thousand is of any use to a child to fit him for life. The most are of use only to unfit him -- to blunt his senses and infect him with the writers' poor silly sentiments. Nine out of ten novelists deserve to be prosecuted under an Adulterated Emotions Act.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

What I do not know and cannot even hope to understand before I die is why human beings are willfully, coldly, matter-of-factly cruel to each other ... What nerve has atrophied in the torturer, or worse is sensually moved?

One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.