There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.

Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

The hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.

One gets started, and then, suddenly, one cannot remember what toothpaste they use . . . the moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.