Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag."

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience . . . from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Generosity is a two-edged virtue for an artist - it nourishes his imagination but has a fatal effect on his routine.

"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power . . . a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him."

"A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."