Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.

A child's fear is a world whose dark corners are quite unknown to grownup people; it has its sky and its abysses, a sky without stars, abysses into which no light can ever penetrate.

Yesterday, happiness came in suddenly, as it used to, and remained for a moment in the great, dark, silent drawing room.

You cannot imagine at all how much you interest God; He is interested in you as if there were no one else on earth.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

I enter the world called real as one enters a mist.

The secret is to write just anything, to dare to write just anything, because when you write just anything, you begin to say what is important.

I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.

The man I am will always raise a protest against the man I wanted to be and the two will live together to the end, but the man I wanted to be will be the one on whom judgement will be passed.

I have always thought that by observing things with a great deal of attention you eventually wrest some of their secrets from them, making them utter what they would most like to keep to themselves.

Thought flies and words go on foot.

The average adult hates being treated like a child, unless it suits them.

If you can't talk about it, you can't change it.

Self-belief is not self-centred. We can only fight effectively for others if we already believe in ourselves.

If I didn't have a conviction that a serious painter can portray Nature more profoundly than the best colour photography, I'd probably give it all up or go abstract or take up photography.

Marriage is rather a silly habit.

You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something.

There's nothing weak about being subject to something.

Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive.

I discovered you can get closer to a characters thoughts and feelings in a book than in a film.

He uses common sense to judge not the intentions of an action but its consequences.