The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

Everything human is alien to me.

One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies

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.

In view of the fact that I surround myself with numbskulls now, I shall die among numbskulls, and on my deathbed shall be surrounded by numbskulls who will not understand what I am saying ... Whom am I sleeping with these days ? Franz Kafka.