It was not miserable - often I did not miss her at all. But there was sometimes a quick, sinking ache when I walked in the door and saw she was not there. Twice, however, I'd felt the same sinking feeling when she was.

Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

She smiled at him, with longing. 'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?

When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.

It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.

I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone?

If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.