The older I grow the more sharply I mistrust words. So few of them have any meaning left. It is impossible to write one sentence in which every word has the bareness and hardness of bones, the reality of the skeleton.

Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.

If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.

The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.

A minor symptom of wars is the cancerous growth of committees.

Language is memory and metaphor.

Novelists who treat violence and cruelty as something to be exploited for their effect, or to enjoy the pleasure of an evacuation, are carriers of a singularly unpleasant disease.