True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me and smiled and said, "Whose little boy are you?"

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.