A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.

And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.

I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.

War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.

The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.

All hatred of others is a reflection of self-hatred. All love of others is a reflection of self-love.

No loss is big enough to lose hope for tommorrow.

Only bad golfers are lucky. They're the ones bouncing balls off trees, curbs, turtles and cars. Good golfers have bad luck. When you hit the ball straight, a funny bounce is bound to be unlucky.

When we're not defending and justifying, and we're being very still, our answers can and do shock us.

It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months.

It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.

If the institutions of parliamentary democracy are worth preserving, the duty to explain them to the people they are meant to serve becomes vitally important.

Time is the scarcest resource.

I don't need an Iron Man suit. I'm already a weapon of mass seduction.

The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.