 Art must take reality by surprise. |
| Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary. |
| A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you. |
| Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal. |
| Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases. |
| The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read. |
| After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent. |
| Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance. |
| One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter. |
| To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter. |
| It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality. |
