And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self.

The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.

The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.

Money is the most important thing in the world, you know. Money can buy you happiness, and I don't care what anyone else thinks.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.

One of the shortcomings of our medical system is that doctors have very little time with their patients.

I'm like that person who hates going to magic shows - and I love magic, I love wizards - but going to a show where there is any possibility of audience participation is a nightmare for me.

If someone steals your password, you can change it. But if someone steals your thumbprint, you can't get a new thumb. The failure modes are very different.

I really didn't know much about the Libertarians. I knew they were for less government and more individual freedom. I liked that.

Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

As poets, we're writing into the void, and we're not writing to be bestsellers. Whatever individual responses we get, whether at a reading, by a conversation or a letter, mean the world.

The world isn't black and white, Annie, it's shades of grey.

It is hard to have a true friend, and it is harder to be the one.