Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

This I say is the present moment; this is the first day of the summer holidays. This is part of the emerging monster to whom we are attached.

The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.