I was rather a goody-goody as a child... It was only later on I discovered that you could be naughty and get away with it.

There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had

I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I'm glad of. It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.

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

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

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

The worse they are the more they see beauty in each other.