I think it’s very painful, and that it’s better not to have any doubts. I envy those who don’t have any; I envy them a lot. They are happy people.

The novel moves like all the arts. It’s transforming itself all the time.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don’t know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it’s carrying along quite well.

One can’t write without having read – you have to read before beginning to write – and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

The reader has to be creative when he’s reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

It’s a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

All psychological research is completely barred by the interpretations of the psychoanalysts. Everything happens in the unconscious, and I don’t know what this unconscious is.

I don’t for a minute think that Hitler is like Joan of Arc. But I think that at that deep level of tropisms, Hitler or Stalin must have experienced the same tropisms as anyone else.

We’re swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

It’s the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.