Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.
You have to be a product of the product.
Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.
[T]here is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.
There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.
People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that.