But to write – that is grief and labor; and to read what one has written – how unlike the story as one saw it; how dull, how spirtless – that is enough to send one weeping to bed.

Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have courage. The whole position of women is what it is to-day, because so many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good for.

Progress? It ought to be stopped, that’s what I say. If the Lord meant chickens to come out of incubators he’d never have made hens, it stands to reason.

I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one’s body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action...

Oh, lovely world,′ thought Sarah, in love with life and all its varied richness.

Look here,′ she began, ’you can’t go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it’s a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward’s way of shifting responsibility on to some one else.

Thus they had harvested at Anderby since those far off years when the Danes broke in across the headland and dyed with blood the trampled barley. Thus and thus had the workers passed, and the children waved their garlands following the last load home. Thus had Mary and other Mary Robsons before her welcomed the master of the harvest.

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world – stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other’s light, then lost in infinite distance.

I believe that service lies in this – that each of us should use in the highest way, to the very widest possible extent, the abilities and powers they have been given. I believe that to be content with humbler service, when one is able to stand greater responsibility, is only cowardice.

What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one’s friends, the reproaches of one’s own taste, there’s precious little peace after publishing a book...