This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

What can it be about low temperatures that sharpens the edges of objects?

Who you get, and how it works out - there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.

In the first half of the 20th Century, we lived through human disasters on a scale unimaginable. The Holocaust was once suggested would be the end of not only civilization, but art, too.

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.