As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men — at least they can cry.

But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.

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.

It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.

And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.

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