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.

The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

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

Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.