“I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.”

There are no ordinary cats.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which. I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.

Writing only leads to more writing.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans.

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

If he’s getting married, he’s not longer interesting.

I’ve entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

I must remind the right honourable gentleman that a monologue is not a decision.

The old and honorable idea of ‘vocation’ is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.

Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable.

The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

Japanese people tend to be much better adjusted to the notion of work, any kind of work, as honorable.

If I have done any honorable exploit, that is my monument; but if I have done none, all your statues will signify nothing.

An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.