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

Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present.

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

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.

A politician is forced to make a habit of noble phrases and optimistic lies. In the end they infect himself.

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.

... we do not remember people as they were. What we remember is the effect they had on us then, but we remember it through an emotion charged with all that has since happened to us.