“It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.”

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.

It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.

God save us always,’ I said ‘from the innocent and the good.

The hands of the guilty don’t necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.

We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.

You needn’t be so scared. Love doesn’t end. Just because we don’t see each other.

It’s a good world if you don’t weaken.

As long as one suffers one lives.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

All good novelists have bad memories.

When we are not sure, we are alive.

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

Beauty is like success: we can’t love it for long.

I say that home is where there is a chair and a glass.

You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.

All the forces that are working in this body have been produced out of food; we see that every day.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

Visualization is the human being’s vehicle to the future – good, bad, or indifferent. It’s strictly in our control.

The whole object of the Prophets and the Sages was to declare that a limit is set to human reason where it must halt.

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

The human soul needs beauty more than bread.

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.