It’s been a long, rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.

Of course. You get everything from books.

It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement.

To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.

There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.

I care as much as I can, but I don’t spend energy caring about things I cannot resolve.

But so often, before words can rise to the mind to imply the ineffable, the ineffable has effed off.

And that would be my method of locomotion, the Lion concluded. Not diplomas earned, but friendships bungled. Campaigns aborted. Errors in judgment and public humiliations.

Do good though, will you?" She blinked brightly at the green girl. "If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?

Don't wish, "said Rain, "don't start. Wishing only...

This is what fun is like, " said Rain, almost to herself.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.

It's cold out. It's even cold in Florida. So cold today that Katherine Harris put on a third layer of makeup.

[Our] plan is to follow the example of the prophets and the ancient fathers of the church, and to compose psalms...so that the Word of God may be among the people also in the form of music.

Fluency avoids hard thoughts.

If you quit once, it's so much easier to quit the second, third, fourth time.

An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.

The arrogance of some Christians would close heaven to them if, to their misfortune, it existed.

You know, actors lie all the time. 'Can I ride on the horse? Are you kidding? Of course! I was born on a horse!'... It's the same with motorcycles.