A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

When I began to write our story down, I thought I was writing a record of hate, but somehow the hate has got mislaid and all I know is that in spite of her mistakes and her unreliability, she was better than most. It's just as well that one of us should believe in her: she never did in herself.

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.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in...We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.