"Everything that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"I am an old man, and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

"The fact is that all writers create their precursors."

"The greatest pleasure in life is to do what people say you cannot do."

"I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat."