I'd given up everything to be a writer, and if I didn't then go on to do that - to write - then I didn't know what would happen to me.

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one's own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.

It's tremendous: this world, this life. Take it while you have it.

Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave