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.

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.

Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.

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.