One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

Raids are slightly constipating.

Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

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

Imagination of my kind is most caught, most fired, most worked upon by the unfamiliar: I have thrivenon the changes and chances, the dislocations andcontrasts which have made up so much of my life.