You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.