I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.
I always believe things are going to work out.
I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.
All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.
People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success.
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.