The man who ventures to write contemporary history must expect to be attacked both for everything he has said and everything he has not said

There are abundantly more English professors in the world than there are authors

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers

There were epochs in the history of the humanity in which the writer was a sacred person. He wrote the sacred books, universal books, the codes, the epic, the oracles. Sentences inscribed on the walls of the crypts examples in the portals of the temples. But in those times the writer was not an individual alone he was the people

Most books, like their authors, are born to die of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them they live, and their influence lives forever

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs