“For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.

The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.

The name of ‘reform’ simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.

Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.

Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

The law change during the Bush administration gave the Department of Health and Human Services a central role in relocating Central American minors in the United States.

Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation.

I don’t know if I have the ability to write an ending like My Fair Lady’s, when everyone gets what they want after a few minor conflicts.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

In this state, dig it, you get twenty years for sale of dope to a minor. You only get five to ten for manslaughter. So like, the thing is, if you’re selling to a kid and cops come, shoot the kid real quick!

When the great Composer shall transpose all the strains of earth from the minor into the major, when the wail of nature shall give way to the glad harmony of the everlasting jubilee.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.