I was never that into the movies. Never. Even as a youngster. I became interested in movie music only because of the studio orchestras in Hollywood.

It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the heart, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance.

But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before.

He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

While they talked they remembered the years of their youth, and each thought of the other as he had been at another time.

A sense of his own identity came upon him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

she seemed happy, though perhaps a bit desperately so

...Mrs. Bostwick's face was heavy and lethargic, without any strength or delicacy, and it bore the deep marks of what must have been a habitual dissatisfaction.

But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain.

God begins to paint the clouds in the eastern sky when the mountains butterflies come flying home

You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better.

Red lips like a living, laughing rose.

If it is possible, it is done. If it is impossible... it will be done.

Joyful is the accumulation of good work.

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

I drove long distances like the 24 hours of Le Mans for years. But even this racing is now over. I retired.

Architecture may be frozen music, but it melts.

The good news is, we're not bankrupt. The bad news is, we're close.

Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.