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

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.

Is it really beyond our wits to devise some form of censorship which would trap only the crudely sadistic?

There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

She did not so much cook as assassinate food.