“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?”

“Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.”

“I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.”

“I don’t. I don’t want anybody else to touch you. I’m silly. I get furious if they touch you.”

“So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one.”

“Take a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”