My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face.

Never test another man by your own weakness.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones.

Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.

It was a dark story.

This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations.

Books are the most tolerant of friends.

Dream up a book on Monday, publish it on Friday.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

if you are using probability arguments wit yourself, you are saying: “I want to live a life like everybody else!” By definition, an exceptional life is a life of low probability.

But you do have to start young as a dancer if you're going to achieve the physical skills necessary.

So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.

I think it's interesting to see how things come into and go out of fashion.

I've had four children and I've done a good job and I'm happy in life.

almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial.

Over fertilized plants may be beautiful but are otherwise useless, like people whose energies are devoted so completely to their appearance that there is no other development.