I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

Living isa thing you donow or never --which do you?

A champion doesn't become a champion in the ring, he's merely recognized in the ring. His “becoming” happens during his daily routine.

We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don't like.

When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.

How could he find perfection in such an average day? Then I realized this was the whole point.

We hail science as man's truest friend and noblest helper.

Truth is without flourishes or manners and runs with a logic all its own.

Without death, our lives would have no meaning. Death frames our end for us and also puts a value on things.

I was never a natural. I got there in the end because I did believe that if you work hard enough, then you can achieve a lot.

It is discouraging to try to be a good neighbor in a bad neighborhood.