Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.

You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.

But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

I do not know what I thought Paris would be like, but it was not that way. It rained nearly every day.

The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.

Il faut d'abord durer (First One Must Endure).