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

At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.

Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.

[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.