The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

A heart favours love, a head favours work, a heart and head both favours hobby.

There is nothing more dangerous to the adventurous spirit than a secure future that can predict the same sun on every horizon because they only see the same view.

Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life.

He slept under the sky, holding her hand, filling the gaps between her fingers and losing himself inside the soul in the course of counting the stars, she was hiding inside her eyes.

When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great.

I'm sure I wouldn't have been asked to judge the Man Booker if it weren't for 'Downton.'

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them.

We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen.

Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so; And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.