In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.

Besides one should not believe that the people only want reading that is easy to absorb.

The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!

This desire [to write] is rather strange all the same and is not without a certain "cracked" quality.