Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour's household, and, underneath, another - secret and passionate and intense - which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysi…

One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greed…

'In great misfortunes,' he told himself, 'people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely …

My father was a proctologist; my mother was an abstract artist. That's how I view the world.

Under which head do you class those who are at sea?

My darling girl, Unfortunately this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh. All the same, or preci…