Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

The youth do not see the old. They are not programmed to see the old, who are cancelled, negated, wiped out.

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

Capable people do not understand incapacity; clever people do not understand stupidity.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.