In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

The omelette tasted like flannel.

But now the shots began—not many, but one shot is a fusillade if there have been no shots before.

Credit . . . is the only enduring testimonial to man's confidence in man.

Who does it hurt? That's who the story is about.

Now that I'm a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that's what pleases me.

[H]er spare strange beauty was not that of a woman, nor even of a statue, but that of the Platonic absolute of which all beauty is but a shadow in a cave, cast by the Fire beyond fire.

Come forward as servants of Islam, organize the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

Freedom does not guarantee masterpieces.

Religions get lost as people do.

Reincarnation is the dissolution of the self. It's like going swimming in the ocean, no one ever comes out, because one has become the ocean.

Nonetheless, Scranton had travelled in space. He had known the loneliness of separation from all other human beings, he had gazed at the empty perspectives that I myself had seen.

We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?

Life is like fording a river, stepping from one slippery stone to another, and you must rejoice every time you don't lose your balance, and learn to laugh at all the times you do.

All media depend on advertisement to survive.

Going through your late teens and early 20s is not an easy time, especially in Hollywood. So you just learn your lessons, you make your mistakes and you move on.