Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

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

Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.

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

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.