Nathalie Sarraute

I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.

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

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

I am tired of angry feminists. I like my women happy, gregarious... and bathed.

I was depressed as a child. I found it hard to make friends. My favourite thing was locking myself in the bathroom and practising comedy routines.