The loss of my sight was a great fillip. If I could go deaf and dumb I think I might pant on to be a hundred.

Yes, I dont know why, but I have never been disappointed, and I often was in the early days, without feeling at the same time, or a moment later, an undeniable relief.

If I was dead, I wouldn't know I was dead. That's the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.

Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

To restore silence is the role of objects.

How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.