Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

If you using local color in an unobtrusive way, it is all for the good. But if you stress it, the whole thing is artificial. But it should be used, I mean, it's not forbidden. But you don't have to stress it.

I think of myself as being an ethical man, but I don't try to teach ethics. I have no message. I know little about contemporary life. I don't read a newspaper. I dislike politics and politicians. I belong to no party whatever. My private life is a private life. I try to avoid photography and publicity.

I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.

My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.

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