After all, what is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much Truth as it can hold.

Criticism? An artist wants praise. Praise.

to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once.

Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.

I am volatile for one, rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous as a candle flame in gold.