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.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

We have really no absent friends.

I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.