nobody ever dies of an indignity.

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

Memory must be patchy; what is more alarming is its face-savingness. Something in one shrinks from catching it out - unique to oneself, one's own, one's claim to identity, it implicates one's identity in its fibbing.

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.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.