Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.

It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.

There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.

There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.