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

Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections.

The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover seeds of truth.

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

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

War is not women's history.