The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.

The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.

And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely.

We scarcely wish to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human.

Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have no more right to exist than a table that needs a wad of paper under one leg in order to stand steady.

He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds; he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.

I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.