True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.