We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp; necklines plunge; jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere.

Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others.

As soon as you become a writer, you lose contact with ordinary experience or tend to. ... the worst fate of a writer is to become a writer.

The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.

For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.