You have a touch in letter writing that is beyond me. Something unexpected, like coming round a corner in a rose garden and finding it still daylight.

The root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

In the 18th century we knew how everything was done, but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in America, I see men flying- but how is it done? I can't even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?

I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me.