The boundary between civilization and barbarism is difficult to draw: put one ring in your nose and you are a savage, put two rings in your ears and you are civilized.

A person's heart withers if it does not answer another heart.

Never, if you can possibly help it, write a novel. It is, in the first place, a thoroughly unsocial act. It makes one obnoxious to one's family and to one's friends. One sits about for many weeks, months, even years, in the worst cases, in a state of stupefaction.

It is love itself that is important -- the ability to love, no matter whom you love. For when you can no longer love anyone, you are no longer a living person. The heart dies if it loses the capacity to love.

I learned to distinguish between the two kinds of people in the world: those who have known inescapable sorrow and those who have not.

A foreigner is a friend I have yet to meet.

It is better to learn early of the inevitable depths, for then sorrow and death can take their proper place in life, and one is not afraid.