Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.

The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.

The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

You can't clobber any reader while he's looking. You divert his attention, then you clobber him and he never knows what hit him.

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.