How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.

But when we sit together, close,’ said Bernard, ‘we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.

He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.

To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze.

She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.