We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason.

My heart was beating like an army on the march.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines.

I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way.

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.

Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.