What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend.

It's rather an exhilarating feeling. It's 6 or 7 when you get up and go out into the fields wearing your Wellingtons or high boots. You know that at this very hour half the nation does the same thing, which gives you, with the benefit of hindsight, a satisfaction in doing those things, too, a knowledge, a sense of the nation. I was a city boy until then.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.