Nothing turns out quite in the way you thought it would when you are sketching out notes for the first chapter, or walking about muttering to yourself and seeing a story unroll.
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous, that you realize just how much you love them!
There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.
Plots come to me at such odd moments: when I am walking along a street, or examining a hat-shop with particular interest, suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one!
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas in holiday time.
I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the ante-room for the summons that will inevitably come. And then – I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn’t luckily have to bother about that.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find–at the age of fifty, say–that a whole new life has opened before you.
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price?
