An actress without talent, forty years old, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than the actress.

And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.

There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man.

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.

If there's a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two. If you fire a gun in act three, scene two, you must see the gun on the wall in act one, scene one.

Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.