One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences.

People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.

I suspect victims; they win in the long run.

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.

Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.

without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.