She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies. And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.

That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.

Only in a novel are all things given full play.

That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: invisibility, and the anaesthetic power to deaden my attention in your direction.

I like Australia less and less. The hateful newness, the democratic conceit, every man a little pope of perfection.