He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

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.

[T]here is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.