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

Not literature alone, but society itself is wormed and rotten when language ceases to be respected not merely by advertisers and politicians, but by persons of learning and authority.

For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.

The past is able to close round certain moments, as if they were seeds, and deliver them again fresh and living in the present.

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

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

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