A politician is forced to make a habit of noble phrases and optimistic lies. In the end they infect himself.

... the stomach is near the heart and one appetite pricks on another.

Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.

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

The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.

The writer - more especially the novelist - who has not, at one moment or another, considered his publisher unworthy of him, has still to be conceived.

She did not so much cook as assassinate food.