[On Paris:] I do not know any city so beautiful and you can be unhappy there and notice your unhappiness less, having the city to look at.

You have to stop living in order to write.

In more than half the nations of our world, torture certifies that the form of government is tyranny. Only tyranny, no matter how camouflaged, needs and employs torturers. Torture has no ideology.

I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same.

the English don't go in for imagination: imagination is considered to be improper if not downright alarmist.

The world's fat is badly divided.

Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance.