Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.

And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you’d do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards you; place your crossed wrists over your heart (the middle of your chest, anyway); then move your hands outwards a short distance, and open them towards the object of your love. It’s just as eloquent as speech.

You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.