It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that.

I feel all shadows of the universe multiplied deep inside my skin.

History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men.

I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.

... the random talk of people who have no chance of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which will weave itself into the moment for ever.