Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.

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

It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.

All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!

Time, which runs through the world like an endless tinsel thread, seemed to pass through the centre of this room and through the centre of these people and suddenly to pause and petrify, stiff, still and glittering... and the objects in the room drew a little closer together.

The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one's pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.

Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.