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.

Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time

When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instance that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch's ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature - fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it.

Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

Beauty alters the grain of reality.