I came from nowhere, and shall be Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally: I am a lion, a stone, a tree, And as the Polar star in me Is fixed my constant… - Vita Sackville-West

Small pleasures must correct great tragedies, therefore of gardens in the midst of war I bold tell.

Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed.

write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can’t cross; that it’s to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish. Now when I sit down to an article, I have a net of words which will come down on the idea certainly in an hour or so. But a novel, as I say, to be good should seem, before one writes it, something unwriteable: but only visible; so that for nine months one lives in despair, and only when one has forgotten what one meant, does the book seem tolerable. I assure you, all my novels were first rate before they were written.