Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possi….

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves..

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all..

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two..

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally..

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling..

Small things start us in new ways of thinking.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it..

The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good ….

In England people are very proud of being very stupid..

Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait..

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria..

I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel t….

The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common..

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe..

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill..

My life is short. I can't listen to banality..

After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities..

Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be al….

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read..

People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement..