Holidays, if you enjoy them, have no history..

A writer works from the material she has, but it comes from the unconscious. Everything is stored up and one never knows what comes up to the surface….

One can present people with opportunities. One cannot make them equal to them..

[On Ian Fleming:] The trouble with Ian is that he gets off with women because he can't get on with them..

How long, I wonder, will ignorance spell purity and knowledge shame?.

People have been saying the novel is dead for as far back as I can remember. The novel will never die, but it will keep changing and evolving and tak….

One should always act from one's inner sense of rhythm..

The novel will never die, but it will keep changing and evolving and taking different shapes..

I have decided to keep a record of my inmost real-self thoughts. Perhaps it will help me to find out what I really am like: horrid, I know: selfish, ….

Convention is another name for the habits of society..

anything that becomes a cult, or a mass movement, loses its moral and spiritual value. The crusade has to be personal, individual. As soon as it beco….

when two people unite, kindness must be mutual, or shocking things will happen..

In a corner of the churchyard grew a plantation of white violets, enormously plump and prosperous-looking. ... I saw the dead stretched out under me ….

Looking back into childhood is like looking into a semi-transparent globe within which people and places lie embedded. A shake - and they stir, rise ….

Advice to Young Journal Keepers. Be lenient with yourself. Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions, and temptations….

One must have the humility and the imagination to honor all deep human experiences - not least those one has never come near to sharing..

It's the thought that counts..

But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation..