Knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world.

Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.

Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.

To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being... what matters is not whether you love it or hate it, but only to be quite clear about your position regarding it.

The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.