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

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.

I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.