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

How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.

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