You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

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

The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person; nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart.

As soon as you become a writer, you lose contact with ordinary experience or tend to. ... the worst fate of a writer is to become a writer.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause things to happen in the world.

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.