Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

... if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the Métro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.

It takes a long time for words to become thought.

Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.