Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

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

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

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

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.