fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

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.

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