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

No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life--the first twenty years of it--had about them something semi-fictitious.

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.

one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.