we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.

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

What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness?