I was as repelled by the French as I was attracted by their country.

My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.

It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.

Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station—the Gare D’Orsay—and...

In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.

Life for me has been exactly what I thought it would be, a cake, which I have eaten and had too.

Self-preservation is the first responsibility.

I have always fought for ideas – until I learned that it isn’t ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.

I defied nothing at all. I ignored the law because I didn’t know it existed. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would want to curb my inspiration.