Distorted realities have always been my cup of tea.

Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.

The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.

The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom.

Like" and "like" and "like"--but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?

I am tied down with single words. But you wander off; you slip away; you rise up higher, with words and words in phrases.

Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.