“In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.”

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

There’s a virtue in slowness, which we have lost.

We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

Sooner or later; one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

Destruction after all is a form of creation.

An autobiography is only ‘a sort of life’ – it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in…We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

Every man is like the company he wont to keep.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.

I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

I can be reasonably funny and light-hearted when I’m in the company of good friends, but I’m not a jokesmith. I tend to be quite serious.

Learning from mistakes and constantly improving products is a key in all successful companies.

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price, than a fair company at a wonderful price.

If you’re co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do. If you don’t do your chores, the company won’t succeed. No task is too menial.