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[...] Balzac's chief characters are capable of development, and visibly change under he impact of circumstances in the course of the novel, as people alter in real life. It is even possible to say that this development of the characters is one of the principal things the novels, and especially this…

[...] Balzac was intensely interested in psychological study, and his preoccupation with it is obvious in all his novels, but it is not the complexities and subtleties of men's minds, the discordant elements that fight for mastery in one human being, as the modern novelist sees them, that Balzac de…

“I was so angry with you,” she said.

“I know.” I was pleased she had used the past tense. “I screwed up.”

“Not just about April,” she said. “I’ve been angry for years. You’ve just never been here.”

I listened. Before I might have become defensive, perhaps even hurt, but not now. She poured…

There is a cruelty in abstraction. It cuts into flesh. It relies on our fear of mortality for its meaning. The way it disturbs, distresses is meant to undermine some illusion of duration, of time controlled, even simply perceived. My paintings were abstract and splashed with guilt as much as paint,…

The secret that I held closest, the secret that I never told anyone, that I shared with no one, was that I had married Linda without loving her. I wanted to love her. I liked her immensely, thought the world of her, respected her, but I could not then say that I loved her. I probably came to love h…