Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.

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

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?

Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.

Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.