the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Somerset Maugham said that it took at least six human beings to make one fictional character. That is true of landscape as well, I think. We have to make our landscapes, change streets, create new turnings, rebuild or tear down, change time, and even nature, if need be.

Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.

Don't people know that it's the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day's work writing.

the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

[The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.

Recorded history is wrong. It’s wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.