A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.

It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.