Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing.

He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

So much of life [is] a putting-off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing [is] ever lost by delay.

The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.

love had turned into "love affair" with a begining and an end.

It's a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible.