“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”

“A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.”

“Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”

“Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.”

“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”

“Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”

“[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.")”

“Learning how to stand on your own feet and avoid leaning on somebody's shoulder will literally help you to sharpen your knife in this era.”

“Life demands more thinking than remembering.”

“Stand firm as surefooted as deer.”

“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”

“I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.”

“When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are...”

“Writing is a mysterious activity.”