The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

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.