To apologize for what you most wanted to do, to concede that it was obnoxious, boring, 'vulgar and unsafe' --- that was the worst thing.

she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face.

He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.

Now that I had actually made love, more astonishingly now that I had been made love to, the fantasies were subtly undermined.

I like things to reverberate, to be suggestive.

The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo.

...all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for.