We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.

Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.