After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

No one knows very much about the life of another. This ignorance becomes vivid, if you love another. Love sets the imagination on fire, and, also, eventually, chars the imagination into a harder element: imagination cannot match love, cannot plunge so deep, or range so wide.

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.

It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.