Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

Marriage is the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone until death breaks the record.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

It is the fear of middle-age in the young, of old-age in the middle-aged, which is the prime cause of infidelity, that infallible rejuvenator.