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.

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

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

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.

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses.