Art must take reality by surprise.

When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.

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 recognize limitations in the sense that I've read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare . . . Aside from that I don't think of limiting myself.

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.

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

happiness has always seemed to me a great achievement.