The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

Nobody ever wrote a good book simply by collecting a number of accurate facts and valid ideas.

Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world.

Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

The French use cooking as a means of self-expression, and this meal perfectly represented the personality of a cook who had spent the morning resting her unwashed chin on the edge of a tureen, pondering whether she should end her life immediately by plunging her head into her abominable soup.

The redemptive power of divine grace no longer seemed credible, nor very respectable in the arbitrary performance that was claimed for it.