Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
The hands of the guilty don’t necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.
I aim to be content with what I produce. It’s an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn’t being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love–it’s being unhappy together.
