Language is memory and metaphor.

Lord, if there is a heartache Vienna cannot cure I hope never to feel it. I came home cured of everything except Vienna.

In Europe, war is a disease which has been in the family for generations: no one is surprised when it makes another leap. Even the patient only attends to it with part of his mind.

There is only one world the world pressing against you this minute.

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

The writer - more especially the novelist - who has not, at one moment or another, considered his publisher unworthy of him, has still to be conceived.

The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.