I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like; I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them.

poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs.

... I know a number of Western children who would benefit greatly if only someone were primitive enough to inhibit the development of their personalities.

The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.

Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.

To me writing was not a career but a necessity. And so it remains, though I am now, technically, a professional writer. The strength of this inborn desire to write has always baffled me. It is understandable that the really gifted should feel an overwhelming urge to use their gift; but a strong urge with only a slight gift seems almost a genetic mistake.

With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.