A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.

Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.

All dramatic realism is somewhat sadistic; an audience is persuaded to watch something that makes it uncomfortable and from which no relief is offered - no laughter, no tears, no purgation.

If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.