Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Illness is the opposite of freedom. It makes everything impossible.

I've often found myself preferring second-rate people to supposedly superior people, simply and solely because of their uncontrollable tendency to bang themselves against the sides of life's vast lampshade like fireflies or moths.

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

A love affair based on jealousy is doomed from the start ... It is certanly a sign of love, but it's a sign that it's already dying.

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.