Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.

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.