If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for ever.

Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.

Scenery can be a violent stimulant.

Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all.

Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die.

The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom.

The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.

Nothing fails like failure

Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?

God hides treasure in dirt, so that only those humble enough to dig through it find it.

If given a choice between stoic justice and compassion, I choose compassion. And if given a choice between worldly leadership and heaven at my feet—I choose heaven.

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.

My pessimism has never been flabby.

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.

Well, I never got to meet Jack Nicholson.

The wrong use of a thing is far worse than the non-use.

The right to life is the first human right. Abortion is killing someone that cannot defend himself.

The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

Fairly examined, truly understood, No man is wholly bad, nor wholly good.