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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.