I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.

I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality.

Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are.

The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.

Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.