I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience; the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to tame the pig, but also to render it invisible.

A writer should not run around with a mirror for his countrymen; he should tell his society and his times things no one ever thought before.

...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.

We are like snails, each stuck to his own leaf.

I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes.