The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.

Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.

Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

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

Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.