Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.

Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.

The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God.

I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do.

I've been and am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen and I'm quite ordinary, and will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.

I wrote my will across the sky, in stars

Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.