The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different.

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?

The central problem of novel-writing is causality.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.