The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?

A light here required a shadow there.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

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

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.