... the novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.

Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one has a job and a free half-day. Reading is the conveyance of this condition.

... we engage in politics because we don't know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our parties exist from a fear of theory. The voter fears that one idea can always be contradicted by another. Therefore the parties reciprocally defend themselves against the few old ideas they have inherited. They don't live from what they promise, but from frustrating the promises of others. This is their silent community of interests.

[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.

The thoughts of my emotionally so disturbed days must be found again, shifted and developed further. Here and there something of the loose remarks I make must be used, but only when it finds my attention again.

The thought is not something that observes an inner event, but, rather it is this inner event itself. We do not reflect on something, but, rather, something thinks itself in us.

Strong emotional experiences are for the most part impersonal. Anyone who has hated another person so much that only chance stands between that person and death knows this, as does whoever has fallen into the catastrophe of a deep depression, anyone who has loved a woman to the dregs, anyone who has beaten others bloody or ever come up behind another person with muscles trembling. "Losing one's head," language calls it. Emotional experience is, in itself, poor in qualities; qualities are brought to it by the person who has the experience.