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. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

This (Vietnam) was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country.

You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

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

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.