There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

Love must wait; it must break one’s bones.

Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.

I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.

I deem as heroic those who have the harder task, face it unflinchingly and live. In this world women do that.

Dresscodes are for styleless people.

Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.

What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

I had a sense of what leadership meant and what it could do for you. So am I surprised that I am sitting up here on the 62nd floor of Rockefeller Plaza? No.

... And if Europe gives Arabia a railway, Arabia gives Europe an idea - which I think balances the account.

I don't have any interest to go to Israel. I don't think I'd ever have a cause to go.

It is curious how much more interest can be evoked by a mixture of gossip, romance and mystery than by facts.

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.

Wine that cost nothing is digested before it be drunke.

Nothing overshadows truth so much as authority.

My greatest weapon is mute prayer.

Anything nice that's said about me is diametrically opposed to who I am.

Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.