In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning, where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

A person with increasing knowledge and sensory education may derive infinite enjoyment from wine.

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcas of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.