The novelist defines the story with the following example: If you are told that the king died and then the queen died, that is a sequence of events. If you were told that the king died and then the queen died of grief, that is a story that he was int...
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two.
Standing each by his monster, they looked at each other, and smiled
I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows.
The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating...
The Waves is an extraordinary achievement ... It is trembling on the edge. A little less - and it would lose its poetry. A little more - and it would be over into the abyss, and be dull and arty. It is her greatest book.
I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere." Liking her better, he smiled and said, "It'll get us to heaven." "Will it?" "If heaven existed." "Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?" she said, looking at him shyl...
He will work off his crudities in time. I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.
One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister.
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear and merge into something else.
The Arts are not drugs. They are not guaranteed to act when taken. Something as mysterious and capricious as the creative impulse has to be released before they can act.
In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in...
How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
Consequently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
An acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.
What indeed is there to say? To be or not to be married, that was the question, and they had decided it in the affirmative.
Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.
Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.
And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of life, their happiness has been assured.
