A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation.

The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

...We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.

Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

Sanity is a handicap and liability if you're living in a mad world.

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

In truth, there is no such thing as an “intuitive boundary” of a sensory state. That most philosophers take such states as brain-bound is not an intuition, but a prejudice.

James's expedition to Scotland is wholly imaginary, though there appears to have been space for it during Henry's progress to the North to pay his devotions at Beverley Minster.

I think having a great idea is vastly overrated. I know it sounds kind of crazy and counterintuitive. I don't think it matters what the idea is, almost. You need great execution.

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.

There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.

Human rights rest on human dignity. The dignity of man is an ideal worth fighting for and worth dying for.

I was born in Massachusetts and lived there until I was thirteen years old.

All systems are oligarchy. There is no other.

'Tis brief, my lord...as woman's love.