As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.

Among the tortures and devestations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.

That complete statement which is literature.

Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously.

It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of woman's life is that.

Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.

It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.