Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.