Vivien

“---In his major phase, he[Conrad] was "ahead of his times" in ideas and techniques;and this was because he was more intelligently and perceptively of his times than most writers then were. In his vigilant response to 19th century preoccupations, he anticipated--often critically--many 20th century preoccupations. He was a versatile intermediary between the Romantic and Victorian traditions and the innovations of Modernism.”
― Cedric Watts A Preface to Conrad p184

“From a letter to Barrett H.Clark, 4 May 1918(LL,II,pp.204-5):
"my attitude to subjects and expressions, the angles of vision, my methods of composition will, within limits, be always changing--not because I am unstable or unpricipled but because I am free. Or perhaps it may be more exact to say, because I am always trying for freedom--within my limits...A work of art is seldom limited to one exclusive meaning and not necessarily tending to a definite conclusion. And this for the reason that the nearer it approaches art, the more it acquires a symbolic character.”
― Joseph Conrad

“Fiction, at the point of development at which it has arrived, demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation.The only legitimate of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous--so full of hope. They exist! And this is the only fundamental truth of fiction.”
― Joseph Conrad

“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”
― Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands