In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.

People change,' she said 'Oh, no they don't. Look at me. I've never changed. It's like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you'll still read Brighton. That's human nature.

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.

A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.