No country in the world has more reverence than France for a good literary education. Every middleclass Frenchman knows at least some of his classics… - André Maurois

In 1936 at the time when the German troops had reoccupied the Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of Locarno, English public opinion, drunk with pacifism, had refused to support us.
"Why should we?" an English politician said to me. "The Germans can do what they like in their own back garden."

A man and a woman who, in their young days, agree to have done with sentimental life thereby renounce the search for adventure, the intoxication of new encounters, and the amazing refreshment produced by falling in love again. Their most vital source of energy is cut off; they are doomed to premature insensibility. Their life, scarcely begun, is finished. Nothing can break the monotony of an existence made up of burdens and duties. No further hope, no surprises, no conquests. Their one love will soon be tainted by the cares of housekeeping and the children's education. They will reach old age without ever having known the joys of youth. Marriage destroys romantic love which alone could justify it.

The truth is that, from the immense spectacle of the world, each novelists retains the one adventure which enable shim to give expression to his own essential self, just as the painter sees in nature only pictures painted in his manner.