For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin

Wealthy men can't live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

You don't have to pound your head after hearing a country song and wonder if you missed something.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land.

Anybody who can drive and doesn't come out of it a rich man is a fool.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

The summit is the mere formality, the ceremonial demonstration of what was agreed to long ago, weeks, months before the summit.

In the real world of competition, the players want to compete and they want to compete at the very highest level.