The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?

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

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

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.

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.

For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured.

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.