Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

It's not your pictures I like; it's your painting.

Murder is terribly exhausting.