Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.

I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose lives were governed by ideas alien to mine.

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.

It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else.

The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.