We Have Really No Absent Friends.

The Novelist's--any Writer's--object Is To Whittle Down His Meaning To The Exactest And Finest Possible Point. What, Of Course, Isfatal Is When He Does Not Know What He Does Mean: He Has No Point To Sharpen.

With No Banal Reassuring Grown-ups Present, With Grown-up Intervention Taken Away, There Is No Limit To The Terror Strange Children Feel Of Each Other, A Terror Life Obscures But Never Ceases To Justify. There Is No End To The Violations Committed By Children On Children, Quietly Talking Alone.

The Wish To Lead Out One's Lover Must Be A Tribal Feeling; The Wish To Be Seen As Loved Is Part Of One's Self-respect.

The Novel Does Not Simply Recount Experience, It Adds To Experience.

Writers Do Not Find Subjects; Subjects Find Them.