You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.

I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.

But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.

I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I'm not. I'm just obsessed with my work.

Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.

I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.