Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

Education is not so important as people think.

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.