“Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.”

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.”

“The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have... excessive living weighs down the imagination: we will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.”

“Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.”

“Living never wore one so much as the effort not to live.”

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.”

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”