I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.

And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.

She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.

Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? Is that a crime? I countered, and they all laughed.

Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.