A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

I had come at last and my heart was beating again strongly to a heart that could not know despair because it forgot itself in the duty of its love.

Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins.

The will is never free - it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car - it can't steer

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.

Of all things I find most unbearable is the injustice of one generation to another.