“Used to all kinds of society, she watched people as one reads the pages of a novel, with a certain disinterested amusement.”

Perhaps only those people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the world.

Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.

We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

He felt he had lost it for good, he knew what it was to have been in communication with her, and to be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy stone, he went about unliving.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself

If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down.

Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

It’s not art for art’s sake, it’s art for my sake.

I would rather sit still in a state of peace on a stone than ride in the motor-car of a multi-millionaire and feel the peacelessness of the multi-millionaire poisoning me.

I love trying things and discovering how I hate them.

The only rule is, do what you really, impulsively, wish to do. But always act on your own responsibility, sincerely. And have the courage of your own strong emotion.

I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me.

She thought she loved, she thought she was full of love.

If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.

Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count.

No book ever ends, when it’s full of your friends.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.