Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

So long as a novelist works selfishly for the pleasure of creating character and situation corresponding to his own illusions, ideals and intuitions, he will always produce something worth while and natural. Directly he takes himself too seriously and begins for the alleged benefit of humanity an elaborate dissection of complexes, he evolves a book that is more ridiculous and tiresome than the most conventional cold cream girl novel of yesterday.

I had killed a big snake. I was now a big fellow.