“The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

“Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

“The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

“The army leaves me time to think, and saves me from the battle of life.”

“Trust the tale, not the teller.”

“Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.”

“And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore, the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is in the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.”