The pleasures of love are really quite wonderful--though I suspect they are rather a luxury and require a certain level of socioeconomic stability to be anything other than a mode of suffering.

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.

[W]e must start from somewhere in current folk morality, otherwise we start from somewhere unintuitive, and that can hardly be a good place to start

Silence heals nothing, fixes nothing, and unlocks nothing. Just because you don’t say something doesn’t make it any less true.

It was very hard for all of us. It's still very hard. The anniversary of his death just passed, and every single one of his friends, still, after all these years... it's unbelievable.

Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

That way you can be certain to learn something you didn't know previously.

I’d rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it.

Vain indeed is all overweening pride in the conquest even of the entire universe if one has not conquered one's own passions.

Hey, all I was trying to do was keep my country and my family safe!

If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues.