... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.

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.

Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to have loud chords struck on them.

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

Who is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.