The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

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.

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

On the stage . . . masks are assumed with some regard to procedure; in everyday life, the participants act their parts without consideration either for suitability of scene or for the words spoken by the rest of the cast: the result is a general tendency for things to be brought to the level of farce even when the theme is serious enough.

Parents. . . are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfil the promise of their early years.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.