the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

Dialogue should show the relationships among people.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

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