History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.

... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.

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

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.