Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.

I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.

You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.