The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Keep your goal challenging enough that you have to change to achieve it.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee ... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

Every creature is a living instruction that runs the algorithm of nature.

Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power.

[...]if you talk any more flummery to me, Frederica, I shall give you one of my—er—icy set-downs!”(Alverstoke)

Every successful business, even Google, Facebook, Twitter, started with a combination of manual improvements and friends of the founders using the site.

I am still associated with a heroic period in French cinema, and my name remains linked to this period.

A car can't operate without the mechanical systems working, but it can operate with a few dents and scratches ... you are the same.

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.