Andre Maurois Quotes

The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

It is very true to say that work done by writers is quite often an attempt to give solid expression to that which is bothering them... They feel they have got it right if they express the stress.

Sometimes I feel like I have a dozen different people inside of me. I've always been that way, and I've always written stuff down.

Clearly, I'm drawn to characters with inner conflicts.

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.

No matter how I look, the freak inside me leaks out.

Song-writing is therapy for me. I'm a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There's a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster.

I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books.

I think that the artists who don't get involved in preaching messages probably are happier - but you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don't. If you have that inside of you and can't get it out, what do you do?

Try to think of writing as a gift - more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.

I went off to fight some battle that I'd invented inside me.

My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.

I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me.

I'm working when I'm fighting with my wife. I constantly ask myself-how can I use this stuff to literary advantage.

I live with that contradiction daily. It is a constant struggle. I struggle very deeply. I don't think I've said this to anyone, but I've wondered if I just want to give up this world and live in the Congo and just be there. But I don't think that's what they need from me.

I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I put it all down - I'm out on a limb here, so watch my back.

The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances bent on keeping me from it.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

I couldn't even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn't let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn't stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.

I'm removed in my real life, and unable to express certain things face to face. So I have always found myself in this fantasy world. That's why I started writing songs and stories from a very young age. I'd much rather walk around anonymously cooking up tales than face the people that I have known forever.