In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.

I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.

The delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.

I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.

Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.

Man is what he reads.

Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of hisown negative potential--with his sense of what he is capable of.