Don't you understand that all language is dead currency? How they keep on playing shop with it all the same.

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.

Two things are terrible in childhood: helplessness (being in other people's power) and apprehension - the apprehension that something is being concealed from us because it is too bad to be told.

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

What must novel dialogue . . . really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. During dialogue, the characters confront one another. The confrontation is in itself an occasion. Each one of these occasions, throughout the novel, is unique.

Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.