I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

I'm terrified of passive acquiescence. I live in intensity.

We insist, it seems, on living.

She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered. Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; there she was however; there she was.

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.