This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?

The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.

Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.