Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.

There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.

You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

There are no uncontaminated angels

We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless against what he knows he is going to read in tomorrow's newspaper.