Of the rest some we know to be dead though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six.

It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.

A perfect treat must include a trip to a second-hand bookshop.

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

You would get longer livelier and more frequent letters from me, if it weren't for the Christian religion. How that bell tolling at the end of the garden, dum dum, dum dum, annoys me! Why is Christianity so insistent and so sad?

There is something I want-something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed.