With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

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

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

What must novel dialogue . . . really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. During dialogue, the characters confront one another. The confrontation is in itself an occasion. Each one of these occasions, throughout the novel, is unique.

Love of privacy - perhaps because of the increasing exactions of society - has become in many people almost pathological.