A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.

Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidts the night of non-being.

Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.

A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.