I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that ... you really must make the self. It is absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it. I don't mean in the sense of making a mask, a Yeatsian mask. But you finally begin in some sense to make and choose the self you want.

The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity of line, simplicity, economy of effect.

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.

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

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.

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