It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.

The same ratios that govern music give laws to optics and to the movement of the heavens as well. Simple. Elegant. Predictable.

Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy.

Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery.

It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.

The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future’s shape, look to the past.

I suppose I'm in that very small group of people who are not waiting for their own story to unfold. If my life was a film, I'd have walked out by now.

Look, do you see that poem?' she said suddenly, pointing.

Choose your friends carefully but don’t worry about your enemies, they will choose you

I've written for every medium except poetry, at which I suck.

All you can do is show people...You tell stories that are true and compelling.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Critics of art are like eunuchs in harem. They see how it's done when the men come to see the women, but they can't do it themselves.

God has given some gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded.

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.