“Reality in strong doses frightens.”

“Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings?”

“Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.”

“[Fiction and poetry] are medicines, they're doses, and they heal the rupture that reality makes on the imagination.”

“Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong.”

“Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.”