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.

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

There's something so showy about desperation, it takes hard wits to see it's a grandiose form of funk.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.

...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.

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