It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.

Never presume yours is a better morality.

God save us always,' I said 'from the innocent and the good.

As long as one suffers one lives.

In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.

It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.

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.