At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.

One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.