“Each day a day goes by.”

He who talks much cannot talk well.

Noble bold is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great.

The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.

Noble bold is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great.

The blush is beautiful, but it is sometimes convenient.

He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons.

Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them.

A wise traveller never despises his own country.

He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices.

I like to isolate myself when I work because I end up losing my voice by doing interviews all day.

The world gets better every day – then worse again in the evening.

September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.

We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

And then you walk into a room one day, whether it’s at university or an office or some kind of club, and you just go, ‘Ah. There they are.’ And suddenly you feel at home.

I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.

Curse us eh/I’ll make you pay!/I don’t want to rhyme all day!