[David] Mamet's the writer I admire most but he's way off from when he tries to talk about what the moral appeal of liberal thought is. His heart is not in it.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Smiles are the language of love.

Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome.

When you get older, then you feel death not at the end of the road, but death all around you, in everything. Life is saturated with death. I feel death everywhere.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

No one but a fool is always right.

In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Planning is not just guessing, it is harmful guessing, because it is a waste of time. All the time you spend doing your five year plan you can use to worry about tomorrow.

It's not nice going into the supermarket and the woman at the till is thinking: 'Dodgy keeper'.

I've always been my own hitting coach.

If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.

Those who do too much for their children will soon find they can do nothing with their children. So many children have been so much done for they are almost done in.

When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before.

Spirituality dawns when individuality vanishes. When our ego becomes aware of something that is higher than it - the individual Spirit, or Soul; then spirituality dawns.

Most "necessary evils" are far more evil than necessary.

To see a doll of yourself is very weird and very neat at the same time.