Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

Don’t drown dreams in the sea of yearningsMake your own choicesWake up to catch those cloudsBe the person you want to be!

There is worldly life where there is competition and where there is no competition, there is ‘Gnan’, (true) Knowledge.

The thing that grieves the heart of the Lord is when God doesn’t see men who stand in defense of the truth

It felt now as if I'd never known them and I couldn't know them again. It seemed to me that whatever had existed back in the place where I'd grown up was so far away now, impossible to retrieve.

Loving her, and being loved, was the only way I could hold myself together.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy but that it is a bore.

Too often we forget that genius ... depends upon the data within its reach that Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.

An undevout astronomer is mad.

Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening, Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!