Words are nets through which all truth escapes.

A year and a half after the end of the war and the German occupation, Paris was muted and looked bruised and forlorn. Everywhere I went, I sensed the tracks of the wolf that had tried to devour the city. But Paris proved inedible, as it had been ever since its tribal beginnings on an island in the Seine, the Ile de la Cité.

In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.

When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.

Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life.

My life was incoherent to me. I felt it quivering, spitting out broken teeth.

I have a painter's memory. I can remember things from my childhood which were so powerfully imprinted on me, the whole scene comes back.