I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Well,’ I said, ‘Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York — ’He was smiling. I stopped. ‘What do you feel in New York?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps you feel,’ I told him, ‘all the time to come. There’s such power there, everything is in such movement. You can’t help wondering—I can’t help wondering—what it will all be like— many years from now.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art