Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.

...beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.

And now she was back in the world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her, and she felt herself shrinking under the early evening sky. She was weary of being outdoors, but she was not ready to go in. Was that really all there was in life, indoors or out? Wasn't there somewhere else for people to go?

And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.

I've always thought cruelty is a failure of imagination.