All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

life is a succession of readjustments.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

...though one can be callous in Ireland one cannot be wholly opaque or material. An unearthly disturbance works in the spirit; reason can never reconcile one to life; nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.