Love, even of the most ardent and soul-destroying kind, is never caught by the lens of the camera.

It was lovely when you found students who responded to things you were enthusiastic about.

If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter. I wrote about my life in less and less disguise as I grew older, and finally with no disguise - except the disguise we create for ourselves, which is self-deception.

The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice.

Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.

Reading is rapture (or if it isn't, I put the book down meaning to go on with it later, and escape out the side door).

The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters