“To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.”

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.

You are eternity’s hostage A captive of mine.

You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

I have the impression that if he didn’t complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.