I have a very small public.

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.

People are valuable, Mistress Vin, and so—therefore—are their beliefs.

Seconds passed, then ... La Dorada skulked into view. She was half-mummified, but sodden.

Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?

Only a fighting nation can make itself responsible for world peace, and such a nation must organize its material resources and manpower with the highest possible degree of efficiency.

Who you spend your life with-much more so than how you choose to spend it-is the most important decision you can make. Do it right. That's the best advice I can give you.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me.

The future is going to be stranger and more various and more dynamic than anything people can imagine now. We will be extraordiarily tested. I wish us the best of luck!

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet in a garden.

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.

Real flight and dreams of flight go together. Both are part of the same movement. Not A before B, but all together.