Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.

Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.