I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

Everything human is alien to me.

Life is a long failure of understanding ... a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

Each book is, in a sense, an argument with myself, and I would write it, whether it is ever published or not.

One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.

And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

How easy it was to lie when one had to lie!

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

It always gets late with you. - Is that a compliment?

In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.

One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.

Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

Enlarge the pupil of the eye, so that the body with its attendant personality will no longer obstruct the view. Immortality is then experienced as a present fact.

I kind of weirdly fell into being an action hero...I have no f- idea how that happened. You have to remind people that you want to act rather than just run around

a handful of crumpled stars

Trees die from the top”. No one should ever become a strategist unless he or she is willing to have his or her character serve as a model for subordinates

If you are not leaning, no one will let you down.