It was pleasant to talk shop again; to use that elliptical, allusive speech that one uses only with another of one's trade.

It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed. Very odd, isn't it.

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

Nothing puts things in perspective as quickly as a mountain.

Fasting was good for the imagination but bad for logic.

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

That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.