One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.

Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this - Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.

I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.