Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.

Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.