I do like Italian graves; they look so much more lived in.

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.

I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.

Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.

Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.