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

I never loved totalitarianism and all the ideas of making mankind happy always seemed crazy to me.

Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.

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.

The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.

The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don't write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another.