Habit is far stronger than the lessons of experience.

Even a small, everyday lie is a clue to the personality and preoccupations of the liar, like a dream or any other confection of the mind, that is half-conscious and half-unconscious, as all creative acts must be.

Nobody believes in ghosts, but everybody is afraid of them.

Thunderstorms were rare in California, but when they came they were, like most things in California, larger than life.

Other people's children, like other people's love affairs, were so much less interesting than one's own.

The author portrays himself in every line he writes and portrayal is always betrayal.

In a city you thought of all life as human life. You had to live in the heart of the woods to realize that humanity was a slight ripple on the surface of a flood of life that seeped into every vacant crack, flowed into every biological vacuum the moment it occurred.