I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I shan't recover this time. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer.

Twice Flush had done his utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.

There is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the imagination.

One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.

The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover.

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.