The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.

My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.

Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.

The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.

Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.

When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.