“It is worth mentioning, for future reference,that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.”

“She was married, true; but if one's husband was always sailing round Cape Horn, was it marriage? If one liked him, was it marriage? If one liked other people, was it marriage? And finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? She had her doubts.”

“I remember one morning...getting up at dawn...there was such a sense of possibility!You know? That feeling?And... and I remember thinking to myself:'So this is the beginning of happiness...''This is where it starts!''And, of course, there'll always be more.'Never occurred to meit wasn't the beginning,It was happiness.It was the moment...”

“One never gets anything worth having by post.”

“For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side and the future on another.”

“And so they would go on talking or rather, understanding, which has become the main art of speech in an age when words are growing daily so scanty in comparison with ideas that ‘the biscuits ran out’ has to stand for kissing a negress in the dark when one has just read Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy for the tenth time. (And from this it follows that only the most profound masters of style can tell the truth, and when one meets a simple one–syllable writer, one may conclude, without any doubt at all, that the poor man is lying.)”

“now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it-- it went on increasing in his experience.”