“ravished by dead words become obscene, and dead ideas become obsessions.”

“How ravished one could be without ever being touched. Ravished by dead words become obscene and dead ideas become obsessions.”

“How she hated words, always coming between her and her life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the live-sap out of living things.”

“Some things can't be ravished. You can't ravish a tin of sardines. And so many women are like that: and men. But the earth...!”

“But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.[..]And if it is so, why is it? she asked, hostile.They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust?Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe.They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.”

“Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.”

“One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.”