Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other.

The real revelation of the writer (as of the artist) comes in a far subtler way than by…autobiography; and comes despite all effort to elude it;‥. For what the writer does communicate is his temperament, his organic personality, with its preferences and aversions, its pace and rhythm and impact and balance, its swiftness or languor…and this he does equally whether he be rehearsing veraciously his own concerns or inventing someone else's.

L'auteur dans son oeuvre doit être comme Dieu dans l'univers, présent partout, et visible nulle part.