One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.

Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.

We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

Too many locks, not enough keys.

She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me.

I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.

I don't believe for a minute that women really want to be understood by men.

A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.

In some cities they tear down buildings to save taxes. They might try tearing down some taxes to save buildings.

Jack was balancing a spoon on his nose when I walked in. "You," I said knocking it off his face. "Me!" He answered cheerfully.

The sole purpose of marketing is to sell more to more people, more often and at higher prices. There is no other reason to do it.

Religious people find God useful. Gospel people find him beautiful.