We're not meant for happiness, you and I.

You had to endure something yourself before it touched you.

If there’s one thing that makes a man sick, it’s to have his ale poured out of an ugly hand.

no person will ever get into my blood as a place can ... People and things pass away, but not places.

Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.

All autobiography is self-indulgent.

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.