we can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height.

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

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

Silence sat in the taxi, as though a stranger had got in.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.