... In Nine Out Of Ten Cases

Not Only Is There No Question Of Solitude, But In The Long Run We May Not Choose Our Company.

Also, Perhaps Children Are Sterner Than Grown-up People In Their Refusal To Suffer, In Their Refusal, Even, To Feel At All.

As A Novelist, I Cannot Occupy Myself With "characters," Or At Any Rate Central Ones, Who Lack Panache, In One Or Another Sense, Who Would Be Incapable Of A Major Action Or A Major Passion, Or Who Have Not A Touch Of The Ambiguity, The Ultimate Unaccountability, The Enlarging Mistiness Of Persons "in History." History, As More Austerely I Now Know It, Is Not Romantic. But I Am.

Nothing Is More Restful Than Conformity.

On The Subject Of Dress Almost No One, For One Or Another Reason, Feels Truly Indifferent: If Their Own Clothes Do Not Concern Them, Somebody Else's Do.