A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose.

Diplomacy is what is practiced after-the-fact. Never be too right too soon -- as any smart Uncle will tell you. The man who guesses what will happen will be blamed for it. No one will believe he has merely guessed.

When anything gets freed, a zest goes round the world.

It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.

This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

The novel is rescued life.

The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind.