“The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.”

“Her pleasant brown eyes resembled Ralph's, save in expression, for whereas he seemed to look straightly and keenly at one object, she appeared to be in the habit of considering everything from many different points of view.”

“The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility. The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What's the good of your writing?”

“Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame”

“For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.”

“As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.”

“Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.”