Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

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.

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.

A dance to the music of time.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

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.