“A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.”

I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can’t love and do nothing.

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.

To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor – the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It’s an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

Innocence is a kind of insanity.

Most things disappoint till you look deeper.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations.

One has no talent. I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

As long as nothing happens anything is possible.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

I am the maker of my own fortune, and Oh! that I could make that of my Red People, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the spirit that rules the universe.

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State… Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.

We must have an enlargement of our conception of God, then we will know that we have come to a place where all things are possible, for our God is an omnipotent God for impossible positions.

The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.

We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century – for several centuries.