Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

Why were you so old when we met? I answered with the truth: Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.

When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.

It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity.

He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.

And both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday & eternal reality was love.