I don’t know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it’s true. We aren’t satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.
I would give wings to children, but I would leave it to them to learn how to fly by themselves.
I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.
As a writer I’m merely a journalist who has learned to write better than others.
Music is important for one’s health.
The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.
She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which one of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.
I can’t think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.
If God hadn’t rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world.
An early-rising man is a good spouse but a bad husband.
There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. And when you do find one, observe with care, they almost always have crystals in their heart.
It’s much more important to write than to be written about.
When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end.
He was healthier than the rest of us, but when you listened with the stethoscope you could hear the tears bubbling inside his heart.
He who awaits much can expect little.
Between the covers of the books that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated.
In the end all books are written for your friends.
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
She was lost in her longing to understand.
I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.