I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.

You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.

War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.

A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

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.

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.