In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.

Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

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.

For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.

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

jealousy, the most hideous emotion any human being ever suffers, has nothing to do with the mind. Or not at first.