Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.

If he had his wits about him Bunny would surely keep his mouth shut; but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do.

Still when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life.

From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .

Who cares? If he is good to you? None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?