In my work, I wanted something irreducible, an absence of the gimmicky and clever.
We only do well the things we like doing.
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
There are no ordinary cats.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
Chance, my master and my friend, will, I feel sure, deign once again to send me the spirits of his unruly kingdom. All my trust is now in him- and in myself. But above all in him, for when I go under he always fishes me out, seizing and shaking me like a life-saving dog whose teeth tear my skin a little every time. So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.
I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.
People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.
He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.
The person who really needs the psychotherapy (. . . ) is not the homosexual youngster who gets dragged to the psychiatrist's office by his mother, but the mother, to releive her anxieties about his homosexuality.
I feel that humor, just like Fred Astaire dance numbers or these lightweight musicals, gives you a little oasis. You are in this horrible world and for an hour and a half you duck into a dark room and it's air-conditioned and the sun is not blinding you and you leave the terror of the universe behind and you are completely transported into an escapist situation. The women are beautiful, the men are witty and heroic, nobody has terrible problems and this is a delightful escapist thing, and you leave the theater refreshed.