For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.

The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.

There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.