“We ask only to be reassuredAbout the noises in the cellarAnd the window that should not have been open”

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

“We do not know until the shell breaks what kind of egg we have been sitting on.”

“What have we given?My friend, blood shaking my heartThe awful daring of a moment's surrenderWhich an age of prudence can never retractBy this, and this only, we have existed.”

“Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.”

“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.”

“The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.by this, and only this, we have existed.”