Luck took me right out of myself - I read it in one gulp, and it never let me down. Sharp and surprising but always responsible, no tricks for tricks' sake; so satisfying, with its shifting and puzzles. So much fiction turns out to be diversion, in spite of fancy claims, and doesn't really look at anything. Well - this does.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.

Now i no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.

I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.

As soon as a man and woman of almost any age are alone together within four walls it is assumed that anything may happen. Spontaneous combustion, instant fornication, triumph of the senses. What possibilities men and women must see in each other to infer such dangers. Or, believing in the dangers, how often they must think about the possibilities.

Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?