He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable

Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.

There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.

From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.