“Bureaucracy will be the deity of the twentieth century.”

“History is an alternating series of frying pans and fires.”

“Is not literature meant to speak of our being a thousand different kinds of things, at times creating even this diversity? If literature gives up this purpose, this duty, it renounces all claim to legitimacy. I am Hungarian. I I am Slovene. I am Serbian. You do not need literature for sentences like that. A bureaucrat will do, and a rubber stamp. A border guard. An Army.”

“How are you? My father could say this quicker than anybody. He was always the first to say how are you, provided the occasion called for it, and he saw his chance. Thanks to this skill, he was made ambassador to England ...”

“Bartók. Blame it on Bartók. Or the bossanova.”

“History belongs to the victors, legends to the people, fantasy to literature. Only death is certain.”

“You have to make choices even when there is nothing to choose from.”