People went through life like well handled jugs, collecting chips and scrapes and stains from wear and tear, from holding and pouring life.

You’ve been wondering lately when the moment is that somebody is truly lost to you.

Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty. They were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses.

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power.

I'll tell you this, lad: A tattoo says more of a fellow looking at it than it can do of the man who's got it on his back.

The man had added to his body in a way that was brave and timeless and beyond adornment.

You didn’t understand what he was saying, until he kissed you. It was a kiss of such complicity, of such uncomplicated sympathy, that you felt for the first time not alone in your suffering.

All innocent mechanisms are muddied up with experience. Children become less and less translucent. Layers of guile and suspicion grow. It's the law of paternal disenchantments.

This is your first and final chance, your one and only biography.

A month in and it seemed to CY that he was an explorer summiting the foothill of an a bizarre and primitive island.

Bitterness filled his heart, and he learned to love the feel of its magic.(Darius)

I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does.

I have a temperament where I know how to win.

Now ... the basic principle of modern mathematics is to achieve a complete fusion [of] 'geometric' and 'analytic' ideas.

Noah came before the flood. I have come before the fire.

I think it's a mistake to rely too much on any one economic factor. It's why investors try to spread their portfolio round.

Meditation is such a more substantial reality than what we normally take to be reality.

Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist.

[Barack Obama] says at one point, "[Jimmy] Carter, [Bill] Clinton and I suffer from," what he called, "the policy wonk's disease."

Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.