But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories.

Meetings at work present great opportunities to showcase your talent. Do not let them go to waste.

A promise is a child of the understanding and the will; the understanding begets it, the will brings it forth.

How many times have I told you not to hit people in the face. You kick them in the body where it doesn't show.

I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.

If you know how to shoot, and are quite ready to shoot, the chances are that you won't have to shoot.

Let people have an education and you can't stop them.

People like to help, providing they can do it reasonably easily

It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.