“I hope that I may die before my mind fails to a sensible extent.”

“Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals.”

“How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”

“What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature!”

“Though the theory is worthless without the well-observed facts, the facts are useless without the frame of the theory to receive them.”

“As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free, so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.”

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.”

“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”