memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.

The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.

Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?

The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrated, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.

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