There were people whose only interest in life was writing letters. To the newspapers, to authors, to strangers, to City Councils, to the police. It did not much matter to whom; the satisfaction of writing seemed to be all.

I expect this is what death is like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable.

Weak people can be very stubborn.

After three days without one, the desire to read a newspaper vanished. And really, one was happier without.

Most people's first books are their best anyways. It's the one they wanted most to write.

The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper, the sale of a house, the price of a ring.

Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do. ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose.