Poetry, plays, novels, music, they are the cry of the human spirit trying to understand itself and make sense of our world.

Music is poetry in motion.

It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.

Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.

I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I've finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose.