Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.

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

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in...We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.