The novel is the highest example of subtle interrelatedness that man has discovered.

For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or "consciously" desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to a star, or you will just stay where you are.

Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spiraling round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core of nothingness, and yet not nothing.

Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.

If you try to nail anything down, in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail.

I cannot cure myself of that most woeful of youth's follies - thinking that those who care about us will care for the things that mean much to us.

Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present?