Jealousy ... survives every other passion of mankind.

All artists need a room of their own

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?

Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that

Writing is a divine art, and the more I write and read the more I love it.

What a lark! What a plunge!