There is no such thing as an exact synonym and no such thing as an unmixed motive.

Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good.

A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other.

All life worth living is difficult, nobody promised us happiness; it is not a commodity you have earned, or shall ever earn. It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it.

You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.

I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

I always knew one thing, that life is made bearable and possible and liveable by the relations of one human being to another, the individual love and gentleness between persons, or in any case, the unbreakable bond that grows and fastens lives together in all sorts of mysterious ways.