SOURCE: "Paul Valéry—A Post-War Publisher: Bernard Grasset—Paul Morand—Julien Green," in Time Past: Memories of Proust and Others, translated by Françoise Delisle, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935, pp. 286-303.

In the following excerpt, Scheikévitch assesses Morand's literary talent and influences.

It was in the first year of the War, during one of his short stays in Paris, that I met the young diplomat, Paul Morand. It was difficult not to notice a young man so strikingly frank and intelligent, shrewd of judgment, and with a turn of mind so synthetic. His neat and swift way of looking at people, events, and their relations to each other at once gave the impression that he moved only by flying. His gift for gathering together, through comparisons, ideas, facts, elements, and for linking them up by a striking detail, rendered his talk both spirited in delivery and adorned...