Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children.

They are universal places, like churches, hallowed meeting places of all mankind.

I live, I live, with an absolutely continuous sense of failure. I am always defeated, always. Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea. The years pass and one has only one life. If one has a thing at all one must do it and keep on and on and on trying to do it better.

I see myself as Rhoda, not Mary Tyler Moore.

Love is the last and secret name of all the virtues.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.