If I stopped loving Him, I would cease to believe in His love. If I loved God, then I would believe in His love for me. It's not enough to need it. We have to love first, and I don't know how. But I need it, how I need it.

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.

The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced

Indifference and pride look very much alike, and he probably thought I was proud.