When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

Everything human is alien to me.

Life is a long failure of understanding ... a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

Each book is, in a sense, an argument with myself, and I would write it, whether it is ever published or not.

One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.

And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

How easy it was to lie when one had to lie!

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

It always gets late with you. - Is that a compliment?

Trapped in infernoIt blazed brighter than the sunHis desire for her

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.

What thou avoidest suffering thyself seek not to impose on others.

...we still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

Like many things, I am nothing.

Peace without truth is a false peace.

Religion is as effectively destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

Everything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.

Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.