the sex even in serious pornography has less singularity than the mating of squirrels.

War, for any cause, is inexcusable. There is nothing which excuses us for the beastly ingenuity of our wars. Only fools, only the diseased, think that we are served by killing the strong young men with machines.

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

What I do not know and cannot even hope to understand before I die is why human beings are willfully, coldly, matter-of-factly cruel to each other ... What nerve has atrophied in the torturer, or worse is sensually moved?

There is only one world; the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive; this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.

Hope is a talent like any other.

... I used words without precautions. I wanted to disappear into them, I fled into the bovaryism of the writer trying to create an effect.