All food is the gift of the gods and has something of the miraculous, the egg no less than the truffle.

In Europe, where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one's got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit.

public opinion, the sum of private opinions, does matter, can matter often for good.

I write because I'm a writer. It is rather like cooking: to make something out of the raw material at hand.

The future of human society. Had it made an irrevocably false start? The compass error that gets harder to correct with every mile you go?

All wealth is relative; and so is its absence.

It would seem that in history it's never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.

Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it.Interview in Esquire Magazine 10/10

May your GodExtend to youThe same LoveAnd CompassionYou have ProvidedTo Others.

Ask not what fun does for you. Ask rather what you do for fun.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

Those who go to Heaven ride on a pass and enter into blessings that they never earned, but all who go to hell pay their own way.

Writers are like eremites or anchorites - natural-born eremites or anchorites - who seem puzzled as to why they went up the pole or into the cave in the first place.

Alloted duty means you should live full potentiality with which you are born.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

I have long felt that the trouble with discrimination is not discrimination per se, but rather that the people who are discriminated against think of themselves as second-class.

The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].