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

He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies

What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?

The justice I have received, I shall give back.

But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.