But to write - that is grief and labor; and to read what one has written - how unlike the story as one saw it; how dull, how spirtless - that is enough to send one weeping to bed.

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.

There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.

the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.

Progress. There's a good deal too much o' this progress about nowadays, an', what's more, it'll have to stop.

I can't think why I was cursed with this inordinate desire to write, if the high gods weren't going to give me some more adquate means of expressing myself than that which my present pedestrian prose affords.