paradise seemed further away than India, but Hell had become a bit closer

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

It's as if our girls don't understand that they can be recognized for other things--their goals, their brains. Not just their bodies.

That was his tactic. Make them want know something they never wanted to know. Lure them into the trap of knowledge.

(A gentleman) is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.

Satan works through human agents.

Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

I think the children of Hollywood are more influential than the parents.

Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

Nature has lent us life at interest, like money, and has fixed no day for its payment.

Small thoughts fear the future. Big thoughts are the future.

I run; I am a coward at heart. I swear, when I smell violence or aggression the coward comes out in me. I have no desire to fight anybody except myself.