They were not friends. They didn't know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear.

How was it possible to be afraid and in love... The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle.

Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.

The kiss became the narrowed center of the still point of the turning world, so that even the park was turning in comparison to the still peace at their lips.

one blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.

When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot.

One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.