The world is always in movement.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

The key function of a leader is, to build more leaders.

Talking is always a good idea. There's no harm in keeping lines of communication open.

I move between San Francisco and Paris... I have a wonderful beach house in California.

God not only orders our steps, He orders our stops.

Boycott of foreign cloth through picketing may easily be violent; through the use of khadi it is most natural and absolutely nonviolent.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

There has to be a real strong reason to do something with someone for me.

That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.

There is no learning without remembering.

"You need hedges.""Hedges," I said, bemused. "Yes, Edgar." He looked surprised and a little disappointed, as if I had failed to understand a very simple concept. "Hedges against the night."