Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?

It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.

The days were heavy and sticky. All identical, one the same as the other. Soon they would even get rid of their one remaining distinction, the shell of their names: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.

And everything would be different, different.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

A mountaineer’s house, before being his home and the home of his family, is the home of God and of guests.

Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.

Can a country's people be better than its planes?

Can one move an empire as if it were a house?

A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village

And I guess when you take away the resentment and disappointment, it's that simple. It is what we do in families: we help, because we were helped.

Any idiot can point out a problem. So, bosses do.

When all else is lost the future still remains.

Ugliness is the greatest of all sins.

I thought it was all a flash in the pan. It wasn't until Broadway came along that I felt I had really made it.

Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

Never complain about growing old... Some never have the privilege.

The acquisition of riches has been to many not an end to their miseries, but a change in them: The fault is not in the riches, but the disposition.