But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.

In the evenings the art of building gave way to that of music, which is architecture, too, though invisible.

There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.

Books are not life, only its ashes.

All happiness is a form of innocence.

Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.

One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.