The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

Music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.

Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do.We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom.

What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up