History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

One of the proud joys of the man of letters - if that man of letters is an artist - is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world's memory.