It would be bad form for me to describe people I don't know and don't understand.

The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.

He lifted me up and held me close against him, my head on his shoulder. At that moment I loved him. In the morning light he was as golden, as soft, as gentle as myself, and he would protect me.

Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before.

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.

I found myself both touched and irritated by the discovery that she was vulnerable.