“if I were to begin my life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.”

“As I grow to understand life less and less,I learn to love it more and more.”

“I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.”

“I have no religion,’ says Borneau, ‘but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.’ Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?”

“If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.”

“When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.”

“The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.”