Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.

A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.

Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.

I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps