Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

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.