All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood of the general mind which they interpret and indeed almost discover, so that we come to read them rather for that than for any story or character or scene of seperate excellence.

You can't think how I depend on you, and when you're not there the colour goes out of my life.

Surely it was time someone invented a new plot, or that the author came out from the bushes.

Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end.

Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.

As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.

The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded.