Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.

The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution -- not a social or a political revolution -- only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

it is true that nothing is gained without something being lost: everyone knows that in fulfilling oneself one necessarily sacrifices some possibilities.

There's something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.' There are too many with that vocation. God would have had to love only me.

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality.