My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom.

Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.

I see a poem as a multi-coloured strip behind peeling plaster, in separate, shining fragments.

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

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside.