Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

Tragedies come in the hungry hours.

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.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.

Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.

How are we to account for the strange human craving for the pleasure of feeling afraid which is so much involved in our love of ghost stories?