There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.

Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.