In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still ... In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights, but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.

It's only by being obstinate that anything is got, or done.

Every time a child, any child, is born, it is new - and different; that is the wonder.

With everything that happens to you, with everyone you meet who is important to you, you either die a little or are born.

Of course one never knows in draft if it's going to turn out, even with my age and experience.

I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate-or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my 'ten minutes'. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.