If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Secrets hidden at the heart of midnight are simply waiting to be dragged to the light, as, on some unlucky high noon, they always are. But secrets shrouded in the glare of candor are bound to defeat even the most determined and agile inspector for the light is always changing and proves that the eye cannot be trusted.

One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

The impossible is the least that one can demand.

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