“It is within and through language that the human mind points to itself.”

“Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation.”

“Before you go ahead with a flashback, ask yourself if you canmake the same impact on your reader through conflict in thenow of the novel. If the answer is no, then the flashback isnecessary, but remember that within the flashback all the sameprinciples of good dramatic storytelling which apply in the nowof your story—fully rounded characters, a rising conflict, innerconflicts, and so on—continue to apply.”

“Fiction can be more real to the reader than reality itself because fiction is the essence of life”

“When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance.”

“The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same—dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits—the repetition through the ages is comedy.”

“The language and the atmosphere there reminded me of Dante's Inferno.”