I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you. ... I didn't think it would be like this

I took the red dress down and put it against myself. 'Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?' I said.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

Sometimes the Earth trembles; sometimes you can feel it breathe.

All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.

If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.

The woman had a humble, cringing manner. Of course, she had discovered that, having neither money nor virtue, she had better be humble if she knew what was good for her.