We Are All Tourists In History, And

In An Age Like Ours, Which Is Not Given To Letter-writing, We Forget What An Important Part It Used To Play In People's Lives.

There Was A Time When We Expected Nothing Of Our Children But Obedience, As Opposed To The Present, When We Expect Everything Of Them But Obedience.

Sex Almost Always Disappoints Me In Novels. Everything Can Be Said Or Done Now, And That's What I Often Find: Everything, A Feeling Of Generality Or Dispersal. But In My Experience, True Sex Is So Particular, So Peculiar To The Person Who Yearns For It. Only He Or She, And No One Else, Would Desire So Very Much That Very Person Under Those Circumstances. In Fiction, I Miss That Sense Of Terrific Specificity.

In Novels, I Said, People Are Transfigured By Love. They’re Elevated, Made Different, Lifted Out Of Their Ordinariness…it’s Not So Much To Ask, I Said. I Just Want Love To Live Up To Its Publicity.

I Remember A Table In Barchestertowers That Had More Character Than The Combined Heroes Of Three Recent Novels I've Read.