A scrupulous man will never produce a great novel.

The man I am will always raise a protest against the man I wanted to be and the two will live together to the end, but the man I wanted to be will be the one on whom judgement will be passed.

If people only knew what lies at the heart of my novels! What a tumult of desires these carefully written pages conceal! I sometimes have a loathing for the furious cravings that give me no peace except when I am working.

Anti-clericalism and non-belief, have their bigots just as orthodoxy does.

I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.

I have always thought that by observing things with a great deal of attention you eventually wrest some of their secrets from them, making them utter what they would most like to keep to themselves.

Yesterday, happiness came in suddenly, as it used to, and remained for a moment in the great, dark, silent drawing room.