Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.

Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.