Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.

There are no signposts in the sea.

Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

I believe that the main thing in beginning a novel is to feel, not that you can write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can't cross; that its to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish. [VW]