Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.

The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.

I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered-- about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.

The end is nothing; the road is all.