Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

For a good man fame is always a problem.

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

I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.