I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.

If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie

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

I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.

Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily

I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.