Day and night she had drudged and struggled and thrown her soul into her work, and there was not much of her left over for anything else. Being human, she suffered from this lack and did what she could to make up for it. If she passed the evening bent over a table in the library and later declared that she had spent that time playing cards, it was as though she had managed to do both those things. Through the lies, she lived vicariously. The lies doubled the little of her existence that was left over from work and augmented the little rag end of her personal life.

To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from.

Sunday afternoons are the longest afternoons of all.

After the first establishment of identity there comes the imperative need to lose this new-found sense of separateness and to belong to something larger and more powerful than the weak, lonely self. The sense of moral isolation is intolerable to us.

But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.

Writing, for me, is a search for God.

I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.