... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.