“The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.”

“Always I find when I begin to write there is one character who obstinately will not come alive...He never does the unexpected thing, he never surprises me, he never takes charge. Every other character helps, he only hinders. And yet one cannot do without him. I can imagine a God feeling in just that way about some of us. The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of the surprising act or word. The stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinancy of non-existence. We are inextricably bound to the plot, and wearily God forces us, here and there, according to his intention, characters without poetry, without free will, whose only importance is that somewhere, at some time, we help to furnish the scene in which a living character moves and speaks, perhaps the saints with the opportunities for their free will.”

“If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.”

“I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.”

“All right. All right.' He thought: am I taking to drink too? It seemed to him that he had no shape left, nothing you could touch and say: this is Scobie.”

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”

“A man kept his character even when he was insane.”