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

(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.

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?

Because a women's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

You shouldn't call then anything. They're poor unfortunate people who cannot help the way they look,

A bird & a fish can fall in love, but where do they make a home?

I played a ton of team sports growing up, and team wins are just incredibly gratifying.

Forget the past - the future will give you plenty to worry about.

As Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a 'singularity.'

I can get whatever I want to eat and when you, you know, you forget to eat you sometimes pick up fast food.

Life is all we have, and if we can't look at it honestly, are we really living?

Those monkey-thumbs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you fu**ing monkeys!

[On Napoleon:] The Emperor is too grand for anybody to tell him the truth, everybody who surrounds him flatters him all day long.

At the level at which I work with people, their great talent is paired with great insecurity. Self-doubt is literally the twin of self-confidence. And I have to be there for both.