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

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

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

I do like Italian graves; they look so much more lived in.

Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

children like change - for one thing, they never anticipate regret.