For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.

Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?

... I used words without precautions. I wanted to disappear into them, I fled into the bovaryism of the writer trying to create an effect.

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.