...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.

No building was safe from the furniture, the pictures, the human beings that it would presently contain.

Like the characters in Chekhov, they have no reserves -– you learn the most intimate secrets. You get an impression of a world peopled by eccentrics, of odd professions, almost incredible stupidities, and, to balance them, amazing endurances.

The trouble is I don't believe my unbelief.

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.

I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays.