Certain books come to meet me, as do people.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

Silences can be as different as sounds.

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

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.