Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.

There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.

I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.

I think that the desire to be cruel and to hurt (with words because any other way might be dangerous to ourself) is part of human nature. Parties are battles (most parties), a conversation is a duel (often). Everybody's trying to hurt first, to get in the dig that will make him or her feel superior, feel triumph.

I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

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