How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.

The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.

I could work in the shower if I had plastic paper.

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.

Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious.

I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays