And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get insidea book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wantedto be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed infor ever.
So we may use our books to form a barricade against the world,interweaving their words with our own to ward off the heat of the day.
So do we discover, in the world, that our worst fears are unfulfilled; yet we must fear, in order that we may feel delight.
the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirror on every page
the great advantage of really contemporary fiction is that one finds oneself mirrored on every page
One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one’s own bad lines.
Women, of their nature, crave for liberty; they will not be ordered around like servants.
The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon “Grand Tours” of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship.
I would have no need for the Memory Of Things past if those which were Present were more agreeable
To be insular is to be independent. But it is also to be alone.
This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak Prophesies while the Wise men fall into the Pitte.
Those in their snug Bed-chambers may call the Fears of Night meer Bugbears, but their Minds have not pierced into the Horror of the World which others, who are adrift upon it, know.
The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people of Venice now identified themselves more in terms of the city. The private had become public.
A woman is a deep Ditch, said he, her House inclines to Death and her Paths unto the Devil
What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement?
The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.
I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon
Destruction is like a snow-ball rolled down a Hill, for its Bulk encreases by its own swiftness and thus Disorder spreads.
Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere.
My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much money as I can. It’s a defense. I don’t enjoy it or do anything with it.
It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences – there’s no real pattern.
London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character – a living being – within each of my books.