“Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.”

“I dont want to be told when I wake up, terrified by a dream of total annihilation, because of the H-bomb exploding, that people felt that way about the cross-bow. It isnt true. There is something n...”

“As I was saying, thats the dark secret of our time, no one mentions it, but every time one opens a door one is greeted by a shrill, desperate and inaudible scream.”

“I was realizing something I should have known by using my intelligence, without ever having gone to their flat at all: that the ties between Nelson and his wife are bitterly close, and never to be ...”

“But it isnt only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. Its more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion be...”

“she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments. or peaks, t...”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”