People regard art too highly, and history not enough

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

My life is a reading list.

The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.