There is something peculiarly dispriting about the emptiness that wells up when, in a strange city, one dials the same telephone numbers in vain.

It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.

We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.

By all means be experimental, but let the reader be part of the experiment

I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow.

We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it.

We all have appointments with the past.

I believe that the black-and-white photograph, or rather the gray zones in the black-and-white photograph, stand for this territory that is located between life and death.

At the time I could no more believe my eyes than now I can trust my memory.

Tiny details imperceptible to us decide everything!

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.

Life challenges are unavoidable. We only need to develop new strategies overcome every challenge. And by faith we can graciously triumph.

The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.

Never take advice from a donkey.

You ask why I love you. For this: You are a minute of quiet in a loud shouting world.

Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

I loved Frank [O'Connor], he was wonderful...just don't get on his bad side. I don't think I would have wanted to marry him, but I probably should have since I married idiots anyway.

There's going to be other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars.

When you touch - don't take. Touch people only when you are giving something - reassurance, support, encouragement, whatever

There is no greater anti-Semite that the Jewish one, and none hates the Jewish people more than the Jewish traitor and apostate.

In business people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own.