Most of us have loved. And the terror for a writer is that readers will forgive you so much, but they won't forgive you one false note about love, about which they too are expert.

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.

There are words and words and none mean anything. And then one sentence means everything.

We have a very foolish notion in Western countries that progress delivers freedom. But progress doesn't necessarily bring moral virtue.

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.

Is it easier for a man to live his life again as a fish, than to accept the wonder of being human? So alone, so frightened, so wanting for what we are afraid to give tongue to.

What reality was ever made by realists?

When forging money, I had always salved my conscience by concluding that I was merely extending the lie of commerce.

Love is the scent of a sleeping back, death a slight draft of bad breath.

It's a sin for a writer to go looking for camels to put into his or her pages. I only want details that are the story.

We weren’t that different after all, our souls laden with the same ache of loss, our hearts bursting with the same longing to save what remained of all we loved.

The highest form of wisdom is to be simple and live in the beauty of love.

To understand how growth, aging and death works, you must understand the radiation environment.

The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

Time is the wisest counsellor of all.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

If our field is "to advance", we must - without displacing creativity and aesthetics - make sure our terminology is clear.

Good posture and an attitude let you get away with anything.

Habit does much to reconcile us to unpleasantness.

The leading members of ISIS were either tortured in US military prisons or in the prisons of the Shi'a government which the Americans put in place.