To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.

I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you?