“Writers aren't exactly people.They're a whole lot of people,trying to be one person.”

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”

“There’s a writer for you,” he said. “Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.” [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers—because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer—still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.”

“You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me.”

“Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives. Yet from this fog his affection emerged--the best contacts are when one knows the obstacles and still wants to preserve a relation.”

“I avoided writers very carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can.”

“I like temperamental men.' 'There aren't any. Men don't know how to be really angry or really happy-- and the ones that do, go to pieces.”