Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.

It is my secrecy which makes you unhappy, my evasions, my silences. And so I have found a solution. Whenever you get desperate with my mysteries, my ambiguities, here is a set of Chinese puzzle boxes. You have always said that I was myself a Chinese puzzle box. When you are in the mood and I baffle your love of confidences, your love of openness, your love of sharing experiences, then open one of the boxes. And in it you will find a story, a story about me and my life. Do you like this idea? Do you think it will help us to live together?

The richest source of creation is feeling, followed by a vision of its meaning.

I don't wish power, only art -art and passion.

To lie, of course, is to engender insanity.

Idealism is the death of the body and the imagination. All but freedom, utter freedom, is death

She was fully, painfully aware that very rarely did midnight strike in two hearts at once, very rarely did midnight arouse two different equal desires, and that any dislocation in this, any indifference, was an indication of disunity, of the difficulties, the impossibilities of fusion between two human beings.