“For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.”

Not believing in anything is also a religion .

In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.

We want Realism’s wealth of experience and Symbolism’s depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.

There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.

Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point.

There is something indecent in words .

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

We never remember days, only moments.

Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.

We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.

It’s pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone.

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.

A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

I don’t think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we’re concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.

Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.

Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, ‘Well, so-and-so will like this,’ which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.

Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.

As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not.

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class – contemporary literature is what’s most useful.