Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

Dogs are a habit, I think.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.