We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.

I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.

That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.