“By the time dusk fell, he was back in his room. The last of the daylight lay like fine ashes on the roof-tops. He did not light his lamp, but sat by the fireplace in the dark, seeking in the far distance of his past some vague memory of a love-affair, some recollection of a friendship, with which to soften the hard tyranny of isolation.”

“No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”

“Observe that for the novelist who has remained Christian, like myself, man is someone creating himself or destroying himself. He is not an immobile being, fixed, cast in a mold once and for all. This is what makes the traditional psychological novel so different from what I did or thought I was doing. The human being as I conceive him in the novel is a being caught up in the drama of human salvation, even if he doesn’t know it.”

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”

“To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”

“I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.”

“We know well only what we are deprived of.”