To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.

Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived.

Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do.

France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures.

I write in different styles because I hear different voices in my head. It would be boring to have always the same voice, point of view.