Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.

There is only one world the world pressing against you this minute.

Language is memory and metaphor.

Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

invaders always destroy libraries.

I am never happier than when I am alone in a foreign city; it is as if I had become invisible.

All writers who can claim to be called 'living' must be political in a sense. They must have what the Quakers call a concern to understand what is happening in the world, and must engage themselves, in their writing, to promote no comfortable lies, of the sort which people will pay well to be told rather than the truth.