A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.

No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.

If the flame inside you goes out, the souls that are next to you will die of cold.

Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.

That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.

Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.

The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.

Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty.

A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again.

There is no accident in our choice of reading. All our sources are related.

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures.

It is with eight lengthy legs we use to catch food, balance and knit a beautiful silk bed, but as babies we had lost our bones and skin, and hence our legs we had shed.

If intellect could be acquired from books, nobody would have been more intellectual than a book monger.

Be brave. Things will find their shape.

We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.

Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.

When someone deeply listens to you, your barefeet are on the earth, and a beloved land that seemed distant, is now at home within you.

If you are curious, you won't be satisfied with the "tyranny of custom." People stuck in that rut might say "why?" and the first thing an exploratory person would say is "why not?"

The war in Vietnam is going well and will succeed.

But generally speaking, I tend to be quiet and introspective.

One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; one who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city.