Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives.

Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.

It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to the moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.

The world's very small when you don't have anywhere to go.

A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.

A Gentleman's agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.

In principle I'm an atheist, although in fact I have a lot of faith