The only choice I make is to write about what interests me in a way that interests me, that gives me pleasure. It may not look like pleasure, because the difficulties can make me morose and distracted...
The deceits which her spinster's sentimentality has practiced on her original good judgment are legendary and colossal; she has this way of speaking of children's hearts as if they were something holy...
The Shubert grandparents. No comfort there. He in uniform, she in a ball gown, displaying absurd self-satisfaction. They had got what they wanted, Sophia supposed, and had only contempt for those not...
She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood—that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements. It could be brimful of occupations wh...
She thought that when she went with Peter to an engineers’ party, the atmosphere was pleasant though the talk was boring. That was because everybody had their importance fixed and settled at least for...
Juliet knew that, to many people, she might seem to be odd and solitary—and so, in a way, she was. But she had also had the experience, for much of her life, of feeling surrounded by people who wanted...
Every year, when you're a child, you become a different person.
Do you ever think that there used to be more sensible explanations about things than there are now?
At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a questi...
Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind, her friend Marie Mendelson has told her. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room...
Algo había ocurrido allí. En la vida tienes unos cuantos sitios, o quizá uno solo, donde ocurrió algo, y después están todos los demás sitios.
A hero worn out by his struggle, one who had sacrificed his youth—that was how he might present himself, not without effect. And it was true, in a way. He was physically brave, he had ideals, he was b...
A fluid choice, the choice of fantasy, is poured out on the ground and instantly hardens; it has taken its undeniable shape.
Writing this letter is like putting a note in a bottle—
What if people really did that - sent their love through the mail to get rid of it? What would it be that they sent? A box of chocolates with centers like the yolks of turkey eggs. A mud doll with hol...
They would be displeased to have anybody call them docile, yet in a way they are. They submit themselves to manly behaviour. They submit themselves to manly behaviour with all its risks and cruelties,...
The job she had to do, as she saw it, was to remember everything—and by remember she meant experience it in her mind, one more time—then store it away forever. This day’s experience set in order, none...
The dark and the snow are too thick for him to see beyond the first trees. He’s been in there before at this time, when the dark shuts down in early winter. But now he pays attention, he notices somet...
The college library was a high beautiful space, designed and built and paid for by people who believed that those who sat at the long tables before open books—even those who were hung-over, sleepy, re...
Speculation can be more gentle, can take its time, when it is not driven by desire.