Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners; a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house.

In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak.

For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.

Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.