O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.

I had committed myself: without love I'd have to go through the gestures of love.

An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' - it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

All good novelists have bad memories.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.