When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.

Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.

A good book is an event in my life.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.

I'm an abstract painter not just for myself, but because I really believe in abstraction.

I was not a natural. . . . This is the story of becoming . . . the Hard Way.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

If you want to do something extraordinary, there's always risk involved. I was always willing to take that risk.

The likeness of the world? A shadow! And world's glory? A dream!

If laws are unjust, they must be continually broken until they are altered.

Conflict is resolved not through compromise, but through invention.

Everything said, you couldn't hope for a nicer day to have a half dozen ex-soldiers with hunting bows relieve you of everything you owned.

Sunday is a day of rest. Loafing is not rest.

I've given up on being accurately portrayed in the media.