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.

So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

Love taught me that your honour did but jest.

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.