Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
Art is born of humiliation.
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
