I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
Life is little more than a loan shark: It exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes
It is misery, you know, unspeakable misery for the man who lives alone and who detests sordid, casual affairs; not old enough to do without women, but not young enough to be able to go and look for one without shame!
Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves.
Man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them.
Buffoons, buffoons! One can play any tune on them!
We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It’s no matter that this dye doesn’t fool you. My lady, you don’t dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little.
When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.
With children no longer the universally accepted reason for marriage, marriages are going to have to exist on their own merits.
In most cultures, you can have a kid at 18 and it's not a big thing. It's not like, 'Oh, you've got to get a different haircut and move to the suburbs and act, like, 35. '
We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross, bearing the marks of the cross.