Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

I pity people who do not care for Society. They are poorer for the oblation they do not make.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.

All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake.