The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.

The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation; it is understanding.

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

This alone is to be feared - the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing.

Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals.

A sense of humor is so handy, isn't it? It lets you see both sides of a question so that you never need do anything.

I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.

it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.

I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.

When a man truly loves a woman he will always try to make her life easier.

It's time to undo Rahim.

Only through sacrifice can Genesis survive.

Who doesn't like dolphins? They're like puppies.

The most important quality of leadership is intellectual honesty. The reality principle - the ability to see the world as it really is, not as you wish it were.

A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.

There are ways of being abandoned even when your parents are right there.