A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life.

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?

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

A writer's work is the product of laziness.

I have always come to life after coming to books.

Time is the tiger that devours me, but I am that tiger.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.