One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand.

If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.

Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.

It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.

Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.