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

One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement.

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

Good writing is full of surprises and novelties, moving in a direction you don't expect.

One should go easy on smashing other people's lies. Better to concentrate on one's own.