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

memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.

But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.