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

A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.

Failure too is a form of death.

One forgets so quickly one's own youth.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.

For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.