Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.

... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

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.

Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.

The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.