Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Cynicism is cheap - you can buy it at any Monoprix store - it's built into all poor-quality goods.

Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.