No amount of violence you've done to others prepares you for violence done to yourself.

Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.

Snow makes cities innocent again, reveals the frailty of the human gesture against the void.

That's what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.

Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.

There is no God and that's His only commandment.

With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.

You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

Gnani Purush’ [the enlightened one] has become ‘Soul’ (Atma

There was no style in nature.

My skill didn't lie in planning battles, only in fighting them.

As kids, our experiences shape our opinions of ourselves and the world around us, and that's who we become as adults.

Something of a person's character may be observed by how they smile. Some never smile they only grin.

Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.

One very fundamental thing has not changed and I realized that it will never change... is that I really need to go home and practice.

"Just leave me alone, I want to be alone," she said when Jack tried to open the car door. She hit the lock, and wound the window up. Since the roof was down, it was a fairly pointless exercise.

Intellectual modesty is humility as to what I know; intellectual humility is modesty as to what I do not know