Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!

Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

As one passion begins to fail it is necessary to form another, for the whole art of going through life tolerably is to keep oneself eager about anything.

Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed.

I don't consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love.