“Reality in our century is not something to be faced.”

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.

There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.

Every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.