I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.

A man receiving charity always hates his benefactor- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature

We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does... unless conquered from the outside by military force?

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.

The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.

Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.