If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is, and if the book has any kind of message, I suppose that's it.

Writer's make national literature, while translators make universal literature.

Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not blame for this, the blame lies with the language she speaks if not with the men who invented it, because that language has no feminine form for the words upright and pious.

There is nothing healthier for a man than to walk on his own two legs.

I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him.

Dignity has no price ... when someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning.