“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”
“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.”
“It’s always better to have too much to read than not enough.”
“Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.”
“Life is, of course, terrible. But it is the terror that keeps us alive.”
“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.”
“We all need to look into the dark side of our nature—that’s where the energy is, the passion.”
“Violence makes violence, as every act of vengeance breeds more vengeance.”
“Laughing at ourselves is possible only if we have a strong sense of identity.”
“If you expect the worst from people, you get the worst.”
“Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”
“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”
“The artist is the man who refuses initiation through education.”
“Writers don’t write for success. They write because they must.”
“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”
“You cannot stop the mind from working, even at night.”
“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.”
“Language is a tool adequate to our needs; we need nothing beyond it.”
“Death comes along like a gas bill one can’t pay.”
“Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.”
“Man is a bad animal, a sinful creature, who needs a God to keep him in order.”
“The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart.”
“A writer is there to observe, not to serve as a judge or advocate.”
“Truth has never been of any real value to any human being—it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue.”
“No one gets any pleasure out of work for its own sake. They have to create their own reasons for its necessity.”
“Man’s first step on the moon was man’s first step into his own immensity.”
“There is no cure for curiosity.”
“Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don’t know how to use their energy creatively, so they do the opposite and destroy.”
“Life has a funny way of testing the will and resilience of people by throwing the toughest challenges at them.”
“Money doesn’t make you happy. It just makes you happy you’re not unhappy.”
“Life is short, and art is long.”
“It’s always the story that interests me.”
“The modern mind is in a kind of conflict because of technology.”
“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness.”
“Music was not so much an art form as a means of communication.”
“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”
“War is the father of all things.”
“To laugh in the face of pain and injustice is to create an invincible armor.”
“One cannot use good will as a defense mechanism.”
“We write books because we want to escape from the confines of our own mortality.”
“In the end, we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically.”
“The future is uncertain, but that can be a good thing.”
“The best art finds ways to show that nothing is black and white.”
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
“Evil needs to be understood in order to be fought effectively.”
“We grow tired of everything, except turning others into ridiculous fools.”
“Power without morality breeds corruption and ruin.”
“Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, dream and reality.”
“The purpose of life is to bring out the best in oneself, despite everything.”