The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.

Until we can comprehend the beguiling beauty of a single flower, we are woefully unable to grasp the meaning and potential of life itself.

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

We are about to part," said Neville. "Here are the boxes; here are the cabs. There is Percival in his billycock hat. He will forget me. He will leave my letters lying about among guns and dogs unaswered. I shall send him poems and he will perhaps reply with a picture post card. But it is for that that I love him. I shall propose a meeting - under a clock, by some Cross; and shall wait and he will not come. It is for that that I love him.

It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself.

I find that when I've seen a certain number of people my mind becomes like an old match box -- the part one strikes on, I mean.

war is a man's game ... the killing machine has a gender and it is male.