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.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

Don't you understand that all language is dead currency? How they keep on playing shop with it all the same.

Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.

Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.