“Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”

“I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.”

“What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.”

“Because if one has an image, however dim and romantic, of a journey's end, one may, in the end, surely reach it, after no matter how many detours and deceptions and abandonings of hope. And hope could never have been entirely abandoned, even in the worst days.”

“There are some writers who wrote too much. There are others who wrote enough. There are yet others who wrote nothing like enough to satisfy their admirers, and Jane Austen is certainly one of these.”

“[on John Cowper Powys]...there is an indistinct photograph of the great man himself, gazing into the misty cleft of a mountain range, wearing what could be an old rug, or an old cardigan. He looks like a cross between an aged werewolf and a puzzled child.”

“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”