In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices; there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.

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.

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

I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.

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.