A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

Sex annihilates identity, and the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has all too much a professional air.

The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.