What a sense of possession, of confidence, it gave one to have pockets, to shove one’s fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.

Do you know anyone who would – secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self – really prefer to return to childhood?

At first she mistook them for sheets of pink crepe paper that someone had crumpled and carelessly flung down the hillside, perhaps after another astonishing party at the club. A moment later she remembered her great-grandmother’s words and saw that they were hosts of wild pink zephyranthes that had come up in the night after the first fall of rain.

It seemed to her that the dullness and the boredom of her childhood, her youth, were stored here in the room under the worn dusty red rugs, in the bloated brassware, amongst the dried grasses in the swollen vases, behind the yellowed photographs in the oval frames-everything, everything that she had so hated as a child and that was still preserved here as if this were the storeroom of some dull, uninviting provincial museum.

Greenness hangs, drips and sways from every branch and twig and frond in the surging luxuriance of July.

Reality is merely one-tenth visible section of the iceberg that one sees above the surface of the ocean – art remaining nine-tenths of it that lies below the surface. That is why it is more near Truth than Reality itself. Art does not merely reflect Reality – it enlarges it.

Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your life to others – to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life. You have sacrificed your own life for them.

Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.

When I am writing, I focus one hundred percent on my writing. Then, by the time I’m half way through the book, I’m already thinking about the ending.

The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past – I felt I was digging a tunnel back to the past.