I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag.

It is the impulse of our century, with its nearly religious belief in magnitude, to fling an institution into every void.

I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.

When people say of their tragedies, 'I don't often think of it now,' what they mean is it has entered permanently into their thoughts, and colors everything.

There is balance in life, but not fairness.