And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.

A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from the land, looking off desperately toward the horizon as if in mute search for a sign of rescue.