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

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.

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

To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden - to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry.

Dogs are a habit, I think.

When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.

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.