I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library.

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.

I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.

In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.