The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.