The primary aim of modern warfare ... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.

Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.

It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.' 'Why not?' 'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide.

Writing a novel is agony.

However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.

In the face of pain there are no heroes.