I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.

The French use cooking as a means of self-expression, and this meal perfectly represented the personality of a cook who had spent the morning resting her unwashed chin on the edge of a tureen, pondering whether she should end her life immediately by plunging her head into her abominable soup.

Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.

Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.

It is not possible that a just God should forgive people who are wicked because another person who was good endured agony by being nailed to a cross.