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

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

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

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.

without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.