“I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness – to save oneself trouble.”

Fiction is founded on truth unless things did happen, people couldn’t think of them.

There are questions that you don’t ask because you’re afraid of the answers to them.

I learned that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back – that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one way street, isn’t it?

Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time thewish to kill-though not the will to kill.

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave – our own self. Get on good terms with that companion – learn to live with yourself.

Very few of us are what we seem.

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming… suddenly you find – at the age of 50, say – that a whole new life has opened before you.

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.

Books are a habit-forming drug.

If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don’t give a damn.

There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.

One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow I felt that if I took on more step, someone would come along to join me.

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.

When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.

There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.