“Bit by bit [the Second World War] really changed my view of what people were capable of, and therefore what human nature was.”

“The whole book is posing a question. You think you've won a war - what you've done is finish a war. There was a crime committed in that war the like of which perhaps was never committed in human history. You think about it.”

“He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.”

“I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.”

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”

“What kind of human person has a favorite eraser?”

“I don't like the word 'allegorical', I don't like the word 'symbolic' - the word I really like is 'mythic', and people always think that means 'full of lies', whereas of course what it really means is 'full of truth which cannot be told in any other way but a story'.”