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.

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

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.

A foul-mouthed oaf, a drunken laborer lying in a drain, a beaten wife with blackened eyes and torn clothes, cannot be made romantic to a child who sees how other children suffer from bad-tempered parents, from drunken fathers to termagant mothers.

An old mans memories, like his bones, grow sharp with age and show their true shapes.

God is a character, a real and consistent being, or He is nothing. If God did a miracle He would deny His own nature and the universe would simply blow up, vanish, become nothing.

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.