“ ‘Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are’ is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread.”

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

“To quote French author François Mauriac, ‘Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who your are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.”

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

“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.”

“Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you re-read. François Mauriac”

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