I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

It is not that the Englishman can't feel-it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks-his pipe might fall out if he did.

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

A facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade, every type of dubiousness.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.