A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

Hunger is good discipline.

I used to play cello. My mother kept me out of school a whole year to study music and counterpoint. She thought I had ability, but I was absolutely without talent.

A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.

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

She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.