I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine.

He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with.They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn' t that worth something? He existed.

Life is a long failure of understanding ... a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace. (New Year's Eve, 1947)

I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.

And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.