People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success.

No one, but no one, ever behaves 'well' in bed unless they love or are loved - two conditions seldom fulfilled.

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.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality.

There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful.

To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.

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.