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.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

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.

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

Dogs are a habit, I think.