Reality is a narrow little house which becomes a prison to those who can't get out of it.

A friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion.

I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.

A perfect God is the creation of a conceited man

The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.

No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest.

It is sometimes said that toleration should be refused to the intolerant. In practice this would destroy it... The only remedy for dogmatism and lies is toleration and the greatest possible liberty of expression.