I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.

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

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.

As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.

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

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.