Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

Everything human is alien to me.

Life is a long failure of understanding ... a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

Each book is, in a sense, an argument with myself, and I would write it, whether it is ever published or not.

One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.

And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

How easy it was to lie when one had to lie!

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

It always gets late with you. - Is that a compliment?

A teacher can change a life just with appreciation and love.

Many lose heaven because they are ashamed to go in a fool's coat thither.

We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion.

Here is one of the first rules of politics: it's not enough that I do well; I must also destroy my enemy.

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

The one who doesn't fall, doesn't stand up.

Gossip is the social mosquito.

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

Change the mind, and you can change the body.