The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.

I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect.

Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.

He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.

Always wanting another man than your own.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")