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

I do not like to "interest" the public with myself.

What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

It is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.