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

Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can't go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album?

The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.