The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?
Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.
I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.
That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.
It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.
All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.