» It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the ''fronts'' people assume before one another's eyes, and the ''front'' a writer puts on the face of reality.
» Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.
» To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.
» Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
» Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.
» Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
» A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.