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

Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.

The conversation seemed just as boring and forgettable as details of American history around 1805, for example.

I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter

He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

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