“Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone her pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude.”

“Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.”

“Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.”

“One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.”

“Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.”

“Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.”

“When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.”

“In big houses in which things are done properly there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.”

“Autumn arrives in the early morning but spring at the close of a winter's day.”

“Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself-in fact till it does that it hardly is experience.”

“With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.”