English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, 1904-1991 Popularity:
“Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politick. Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.”
“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failur”
“A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.”
“Those who marry God can become domesticated too / it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word ''Love'' means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and ''Ave Maria '' like ''dearest'' is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves / it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.”
