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.

[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

Silences can be as different as sounds.

With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.

Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.