Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.

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.

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.

Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again.