The hunger of the spirit for eternity - as fierce as a starving man's for bread - is much less a craving to go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity.

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

Speaking the truth, once you have started it, is too exhilarating to draw back.

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

to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music and the company. ... the gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table.

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

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.