Forgiveness Should Be An Act,

The Best That An Individual Can Do Is To Concentrate On What He Or She Can Do, In The Course Of A Burning Effort To Do It Better.

As A Novelist, I Cannot Occupy Myself With "characters," Or At Any Rate Central Ones, Who Lack Panache, In One Or Another Sense, Who Would Be Incapable Of A Major Action Or A Major Passion, Or Who Have Not A Touch Of The Ambiguity, The Ultimate Unaccountability, The Enlarging Mistiness Of Persons "in History." History, As More Austerely I Now Know It, Is Not Romantic. But I Am.

A Novel Which Survives, Which Withstands And Outlives Time, Does Do Something More Than Merely Survive. It Does Not Stand Still. It Accumulates Round Itself The Understanding Of All These Persons Who Bring To It Something Of Their Own. It Acquires Associations, It Becomes A Form Of Experience In Itself, So That Two People Who Meet Can Often Make Friends, Find An Approach To Each Other, Because Of This One Great Common Experience They Have Had.

Dress Has Never Been At All A Straightforward Business: So Much Subterranean Interest And Complex Feeling Attaches To It. As A Topic ... It Has A Flowery Head But Deep Roots In The Passion. On The Subject Of Dress Almost No One, For One Or Another Reason, Feels Truly Indifferent: If Their Own Clothes Do Not Concern Them, Somebody Else's Do. ... Ten Minutes Talk About Clothes (except Between Perfect Friends) Tends To Make Everyone Present Either Overbearing, Guarded Or Touchy.

All Your Youth You Want To Have Your Greatness Taken For Granted; When You Find It Taken For Granted, You Are Unnerved.