The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about what will happen to the hero.

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?

it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.

If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.

The consumer today is the victim of the manufacturer who launches on him a regiment of products for which he must make room in his soul.

I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.

Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.