Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.