nobody ever dies of an indignity.

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.

Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually - our sense of personality is a sense of outrage.