He refused categorically all ideas of fidelity or serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude tenderness and devotion - feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient.

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.

After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent.

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.

It isn't common sense that is paramount in this world, it's wishful thinking.

Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.

I did not find him absurd. I saw he was kind, that he was on the verge of real love. I thought it would be nice for me to be in love with him, too.