“we do not write as we want but as we can”

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”

“What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?”

“I don't know that in life it matters so much what you do as what you are. No one can learn by the experience of another because no circumstances are quite the same. If we made rather a hash of things perhaps it was because we were rather trivial people.”

“Sometimes I think that when we say our honour prevents us from doing this or that we deceive ourselves, and our real motive is vanity.”

“Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence.”

“We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren’t perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.”