As Jules Renard said, no matter how much care an author takes to write as few books as possible, there will be people who haven't heard of some of them.

I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.

The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do... Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how.

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

The death of God left the angels in a strange position.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.

When everything else is shattering, you feel like the one true constant.

Allow yourself to grow. When you think you've seen it all, this is far beyond the truth... There is so much more out there seeking you.

Our Lord never referred to unanswered prayer he taught that prayers are always answered. He ever implied that prayers were answered rightly because of the Heavenly Father's wisdom.

It's much harder to be an in-house person than an outside person.

The United States is still seen as the leader at the world that wants to be free.

When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

Just breathing and smiling can make us very happy, because when we breathe consciously we recover ourselves completely and encounter life in the present moment.

A masterful retreat is itself a victory.

Gender preference does not define you. Your spirit defines you.

I'm sure acting is a deeply neurotic thing to do.