The Passion Of Vanity Has

...though One Can Be Callous In Ireland One Cannot Be Wholly Opaque Or Material. An Unearthly Disturbance Works In The Spirit; Reason Can Never Reconcile One To Life; Nothing Allays The Wants One Cannot Explain.

No One Of The Characters In My Novels Has Originated, So Far As I Know, In Real Life. If Anything, The Contrary Was The Case: Persons Playing A Part In My Life--the First Twenty Years Of It--had About Them Something Semi-fictitious.

One Should Discuss One's Difficulties Only When They Are Over.

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.

When One Is A Child, The Disposition Of Objects, Tables And Chairs And Doors, Seems Part Of The Natural Order: A House-move Lets In Chaos - As It Does For A Dog.