It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.

If you choose the sort of life which has no conventional pattern you have to try to make an art of it, or it is a mess.

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.

Being in love is something like poetry. Certainly, you can analyze and expound its various senses and intentions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.

Interviews can be stimulating. It depends on the intelligence of the interviewer.

The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story.