I was never my own type so I completely missed my beauty all through my youth.

The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino.

The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.

...I'm no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate things.

People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which is sometimes useful.