Speaking the truth, once you have started it, is too exhilarating to draw back.

... 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.

Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?

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.

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.

Writers sometimes talk as though they were the only friends of civilization. This is their conceit. But they have special powers to serve -- or to corrupt -- civilization, and are obliged to use them.

... I used words without precautions. I wanted to disappear into them, I fled into the bovaryism of the writer trying to create an effect.