I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."

Anais Nin shows an occasional grace in writing, but her work is quite foreign to me, precisely because she wants so much to be feminine and not feminist. And then she is so gaga before so many men. She talks about men I know in France, men who were less than nothing, and she considers them kings, extraordinary people.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

‎A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.