Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths

(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.

When all else fails, philosophize.

We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering.

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.

But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

I don't think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.

A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black against the snow.

You used, " he said, and then took a sharp breath, "to call me Augustus.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

My motto is "more mystery, less history".

I prefer musicals, because I am the best dancer who ever lived. The best plies, the best sashays, and by far the best-smelling Capezios.

Finding lack in others is not the path to liking what you see in yourself.

He who reaches all his goals has probably not chosen them high enough.

All Plutophiles are based in America. If you go to other countries, they have much less of an attachment to either the existence or preservation of Pluto as a planet.

Undoubtedly [Beethoven's] music often verges on kitsch

No, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.