The national characteristics... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.

Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.

It only takes one match to ignite a haystack, or one remark to fire a mind.

I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

Sorrow is implicit in love as gravitation is implicit in mass.