Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.

Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has its own flora and fauna.

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures.

I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.

The Eucharist engages us unreservedly; it is a pact of love, an alliance signed in the deeper recesses of our being. All our potentialities are called upon to warrant the protection and fulfillment of this pact.

Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.