If you live in a place for long you cease to read about it.

There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.

You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.' Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.