I am dead to them, even though I once flowered.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are we? Animals.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.

If every soldier refused to take arms ... there would be no wars; but no one has the courage to be the first to live according to Christ and Socrates, because in a world of opportunists they would be martyred.

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.