I don’t care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations…I don’t think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t...

You must promise me. You can’t desire the end without desiring the means.’Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.

He’s satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can’t be satisfied.

The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest’s servant, our hearts go out...

I doubt if ever one ceases to love, but one can cease to be in love as easily as one can outgrow an author one admired as a boy.

She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my...

I’m afraid of the dark.’ And his mother: ‘Don’t be silly. You know there’s nothing to be afraid in the dark.’ But he knew hte falsity of the reasoning; he knew how they taught also...

In my school, he thought, they learn bitterness and frustration and how to grow old.

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

Oh,’ the priest said, ‘that’s another thing altogether – God is love. I don’t say the heart doesn’t feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a...

Death never mattered at those times – in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the...

Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking, too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went...

That was the worst period of all: it is my profession to imagine, to think in images: fifty times through the day, and immediately I woke during the night, a curtain would rise and the...

I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You’re my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love...

I know one thing you don’t. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn’t teach you that at school.’Rose didn’t answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her....

Did you find anything special?’ Blackie asked.T. nodded. ‘Come over here,’ he said, ‘and look.’ Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. ‘Old Misery’s savings,’ he said. ‘Mike ripped out the mattress,...

This was hell then; it wasn’t anything to worry about: it was just his own familiar room.

He had stylized himself–life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one...

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

You are all alike, you people. You never learn the truth–that God knows nothing.

Me? You are laughing at me. Put your hand here. This has no theology.’ I mocked myself while I made love. I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement.

As long as one suffers one lives.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see –...

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a...

Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.

People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery.

Death was far more certain than God.

That was my first instinct — to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much...

We are all resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.

who amongst us has not committed treason to something or someone more important than a country?

He couldn’t tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined – the taste...

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

Beware of formulas. If there’s a God, he’s not a God of formulas.

Fun… human nature… does no one any harm… Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain–nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed...

Suffering is not increased by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.

But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my...

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

But you do believe, don’t you,” Rose implored him, “you think it’s true?””Of course it’s true,” the Boy said. “What else could there be?” he went scornfully on. “Why,” he said, “it’s the only thing...

Hatred seems to work on the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able...

One can’t reason away regret-it’s a bit like falling in love, falling into regret.

one gets so hopelessly tired of deception.

How often the priest had heard the same confession–Man was so limited: he hadn’t even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had...

There are dreams which belong only partly in the unconscious; these are the dreams we remember on waking so vividly that we deliberately continue them, and so fall asleep again and wake and sleep and...

Hate is a lack of imagination.

The old man in the beard he felt convinced was wrong. He was too busy saving his own soul. Wasn’t it better to take part even in the crimes of people you loved, if it...

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How...