In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

We hide the truer part of ourselves when we love.

Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.

Movie people are possessed by demons, but a very low form of demons.

Ideally I'd like to spend two evenings a week talking to Proust and another conversing with the Holy Ghost.

What matters is the imaginative truth.