Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.

Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.