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

The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella--and was necessary to it.

It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

This is the pain-pleasure of having newly adult children; they're innocent and ruthless in forgetting their sweet old dependence.

She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime.