A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

The hour that burst the spirit's sleep.

Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.