Iconic Paris tells us: here are our three-star attractions, go thou and marvel. And so we gaze obediently at what we are told to gaze at, without exactly asking why.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

If experience is the best teacher, there's nothing that comes close to the experience of life.

I must be out of my mind if I loved you in spite of everything you've done, and anyone else would condemn you for it, but I can't condemn you at all. In my own troubled mind, I loved you for it.

Age cannot wither her nor custom stale Her infinite variety.

I'm a dog person, but I don't have a pet.

Like any kind of writing, there are good days and frustrating days. But even frustrating days can be rewarding sometimes.

The rain on my chest is a baptism - I'm born again.

It is always the task of the intellectual to "think otherwise." This is not just a perverse idiosyncrasy. It is an absolutely essential feature of a society.

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

People think I'm a Simpsons character.