It's a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible.

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

People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.

One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.

He's satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can't be satisfied.

Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.

Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven't even got a self to express.