“And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.”

Not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.

It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!

I don’t want realism. I want magic!

Some things are not forgiveable.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin’ can outrun it. Death commences too early–almost before you’re half-acquainted with life–you meet the other.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

I don’t believe in “original sin.” I don’t believe in “guilt.” I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Luck is believing you’re lucky.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.

It’s all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow.

When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously.

And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting.

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It’s where it all began and ended.

Rock ‘n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm.

Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.

It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.

It wasn’t until I came out of my daze that I began to appreciate my accomplishment.