She admired him; she was used to clutching her hands together in his wake and heaving audible sighs.

Optimism is the content of small men in high places.

...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.

Having once found the intensity of art, nothing else that can happen in life can ever again seem as important as the creative process.

It is youth’s felicity as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present, but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly imagined future

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels.