I had always been so much taken with the way all English people I knew always were going to see their lawyer. Even if they have no income and do not earn anything they always have a lawyer.

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts.

One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. 'Stop!' cried the groaning old man at last, 'Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Near a war is always not very near.

French people do like good fighting, they like it better than anything.