Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.

How I hate the attitude of ordinary people to life. How I loathe ordinariness! How from my soul I abhor nice simple people, with their eternal price list. It makes my blood boil.

You don't learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can't you look at it with your clear simple wits?

The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense.

In every great novel, who is the hero all the time? Not any of the characters, but some unnamed and nameless flame behind them all.

I would like [the working man] to give me back books and newspapers and theories. And I would like to give him back, in return, his old insouciance, and rich, original spontaneity and fullness of life.