The strangest thing about life is not its frightful cruelty, but that it can be gentle.

A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas - on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor - unless he means something else, quite different - is a rogue.

Women will always put persons above ideas ... and so they'll always be defeated. Persons die, and ideas rule the world.

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

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.

No form of art repeats or imitates successfully all that can be said by another; the writer conveys his experience of life along a channel of communication closed to painter, mathematician, musician, film-maker.

To reject censorship after studying the risks involved is very well. To reject it ex cathedra, in the tones of Calvin pronouncing a dogma, eyes and mind closed to the possible consequences, the even marginally possible, is to make things too comfortable for oneself.