I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.

When the rich [and politically powerful] make war, it's the poor [and politically weak] who die.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.

The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free, Aegistheus. You know it and they do not.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.