The ballot box is a most inadequate mechanism of change.

from one minute to the next the present is merely an honorary past. It must be filled unceasingly anew to dissemble the curse it carries within itself; that is why Americans like speed, alcohol, thriller films and any sensational news: the demand for new things, and ever newer things, is feverish since nowhere will they rest.

There has to be a certain relationship between the life and the writing style, and that is really a problem.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.

She offered her mouth to him, as if enchanted. A Persian princess, a little Indian, a fox, a morning glory, a lovely wisteria--it always pleased them when you told them they looked like something, like something else.

No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.