In the Gulag, it was not the case that people died like flies. Rather, flies died like people.

She didn't use the misery of others to cultivate her own smugness, true, but at least I didn't go about eating all their food.

If you want a couple of weeks in bed (as I did, bi-annually), and if you have indolent and credulous parents, it’s amazing what a few packs of French cigarettes will do.

Sex was like Disneyland to her: an allotment of organized wonders and legal mischief.

You couldn't catch a yawn from someone you didn't like.

Evidentemente questa la caratteristica della citt contemporanea. Puoi aver voglia di lavorarci. Ma nessuno si aspetta seriamente che tu ci viva.

Richard didn't mind Gwyn being rich...Having always been poor was good preparation for being rich. Better than having always been rich...The well and all its sweet water would surely one day run dry.

Like writing, paintings seem to hint at a topsy-turvy world in which, so to speak, time’s arrow moves the other way.

It’s possible to be flippant here, when Jihadists fly aircraft into buildings they shout God is Great, what do atheists shout when they do it?

On dope he sometimes thought that all the televisions on Calchalk Street were softly cackling about Richard Tull: news flashes about his most recent failures, panel discussions about his obscurity, his neglect.

Mary wanted to get out of here and on to another plane of life; but these words weren't going to help her out. They had been put together with only one thing in mind: to lock her in.

Points of a journey do not matter when the journey has no destination, only an end.

Pain is nature’s way of telling us that something is wrong. Patiently, pain goes on telling us this, long after we’ve got the message.

Beauty, extreme yet ambiguously available; this very roughly, was what Nicola's entrance to the Black Cross had said to Keith. But he didn't know the nature -- he didn't know the brand -- of the availability.

If you can fight, you don’t have to fight. And you don’t have to cower. And girls like that, whatever they say.

[Describing the soap in the gulag] It smelt as if some sacred physical law had been demeaned in its creation.

Once, as he inhaled with his customary vehemence, I had a thought that made my armpits come alive.

Give the reader hell. Stretch the reader.

Making lots of money--it's not that hard, you know. It's overestimated. Making lots of money is a breeze. You watch. ch. 1, p. 23 in Penguin paperback

Q: What’s the difference between a Communist car and a Communist proselytizer? A: You can close the door on a Communist proselytizer.

It’s a common slander of the Jews, but it’s no slander of a huge fraction of the Germans. They went like sheep to the slaughterhouse. And then they donned the rubber aprons and set to work.

Suffering doesn’t concern itself with the scale of other sufferings.

Today, in the West, there are no good excuses for religious belief - unless we think that ignorance, reaction, and sentimentality are good excuses.

Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move(...)

How many times have I asked myself: when is the world going to start making sense? Yet the answer is out there. It is rushing towards me over the uneven ground.

Beneath the clock was an enormous arrow, on which was printed: Change Here For Eastern Trains. But time had no arrow, not here.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.

If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.

The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest.

Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.

True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.

You have as much laughter as you have faith.

Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.

I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.

Beer is made by men, wine by God.

There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books.

Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.

Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.

There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.

Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!

The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.

A unjust law, is no law at all.

All the cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the word.