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.

What makes you imagine ... that anything of importance can be taught in a school?

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.

confession ran in the family.

For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

Marriage isn't a tram. It doesn't have to get anywhere.