I can't talk you in terms of time --your time and my time are different

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

You think it more difficult to turn air into wine than to turn wine into blood?.

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.

We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.

Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politick. Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.