The difficulty, the ordeal, is to start.

Jealously was an unjust and stifling thing.

I can write best in the silence and solitude of the night, when everyone has retired.

Men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.

Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.

Every once in a while I feel the tremendous force of the novel. But it does not stay with me.

Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.