Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

A lot of jobs don't allow you to be who you are. There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.

...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist.

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

... man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it means unified... Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact, finally obeys this unreasonabledesire and claims to give life a form it does not have.