Despair ... is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.

(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.

When all else fails, philosophize.

We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering.

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.

But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

I don't think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.

A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

It's good to play 100 per cent live - no tricks, no samples, no messing about.

To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!

So if you think this is going to save you...If you think anything is going to save you...Please consider this your final warning.

I know everything about candy. Would you believe I even know where to find gumballs in the middle of Africa?

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."

What is loved is a hit. What is a hit is loved.

When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.

Vaclav Havel is the figure that represents the Velvet Revolution and the reunification of Europe. He will be sorely missed.

We don't think about it, but it has a tremendous effect. But these are things you don't see right in front of your eyes. You need to think about them a little, to see what the consequences are.

He guides me and the bird. In His good time!