Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world.

Joy and sadness come by turns.

Genius consists not in making great discoveries, but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.

Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.

Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.

Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.

Maybe there are times when an honest hatred serves us better than love corrupted by sentimentality, meretriciousness, sententiousness, cuteness.