“That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.”

Imagining conscious identity as only a small illuminated part of the whole self · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Solitude
• Truth

“We are not the marvellous choosers and deciders we think we are.”

Challenging the belief that conscious choice governs everything we do · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Truth

“The deepest self is way down, and the conscious self is an obstinate monkey.”

A vivid contrast between instinctive being and the argumentative conscious mind · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Truth

“Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.”

Locating freedom in obedience to one's deepest nature rather than passing preference · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Freedom
• Truth

“Men are less free than they imagine; ah, far less free. The freest are perhaps least free.”

Questioning easy assumptions about personal freedom · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Freedom
• Truth

“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

Separating the meaning of a work from the intentions or opinions of its creator · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Art
• Truth

“Art has two great functions. First, it provides an emotional experience. And then, if we have the courage of our own feelings, it becomes a mine of practical truth.”

Presenting art as both felt experience and a source of usable insight · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Art
• Truth

“Out of a pattern of lies art weaves the truth.”

A compact statement of how fiction can disclose truth through invention · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Art
• Truth

“Truth lives from day to day, and the marvellous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh to-day.”

Insisting that truth must remain alive to changing experience rather than become fixed doctrine · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Time
• Truth

“Art-speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day.”

Arguing that art may reveal truths its creator cannot consciously state · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Art
• Truth

“The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience.”

Contrasting the safety of categorised ideas with the disruption of genuine experience · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Truth

“The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything.”

Suggesting that lived novelty can be more disturbing than new ideas · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Fear
• Truth

“It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen.”

On the difficulty of recognising genuinely unfamiliar forms of expression · Critical study, Studies in Classic American Literature

• Art
• Truth

“I love Italian opera — it's so reckless. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't worry about the ultimate.”

Celebrating music and temperament that favour immediacy over solemn abstraction · Letter to Louie Burrows, 1 April 1911

• Art
• Joy
• Music

“Tragedy is like strong acid — it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.”

Seeing tragedy as a severe test that strips experience down to what is true · Letter to Louie Burrows, 1 April 1911

• Art
• Despair
• Truth

“I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one like a snow leopard waiting to pounce.”

Turning dislike of northern cold into a characteristically physical image · Letter to John Middleton Murry, 3 October 1924

• Nature
• Time

“California is a queer place — in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific.”

A vivid impression of California as geographically and spiritually turned towards the Pacific · Letter, 24 September 1923

• Nature
• Solitude

“The dead don't die. They look on and help.”

Expressing a sense that the dead remain present in the lives of the living · Letter to John Middleton Murry, 2 February 1923

• Death
• Faith
• Memory

“I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.”

A comic description of writing as a release of pent-up feeling · Letter to Cynthia Asquith, 25 November 1913

• Art
• Joy

“We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free from their authority.”

On the creative need to break from the generation immediately before us · Letter to Edward Garnett, 1 February 1913

• Art
• Freedom

“Tragedy ought really to be a great kick at misery.”

Treating tragedy as a force that confronts suffering rather than merely submitting to it · Letter to A. W. McLeod, 6 October 1912

• Art
• Despair
• Hope

“My God, these folks don't know how to love — that's why they love so easily.”

Distinguishing deep attachment from easy declarations of affection · Letter to Blanche Jennings, 8 May 1909

• Love
• Truth

“I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.”

A playful defence of the intimate asides that give personal writing its character · Letter to Blanche Jennings, 15 April 1908

• Art
• Friendship

“Be sure my heart is with you in your grief, desolation, and general harass and anxiety.”

One of her late expressions of steadfast sympathy with her brother's suffering · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 18 April 1894

• Despair
• Friendship
• Love