To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.