Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.

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

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.