The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

My work was done, so it was time to start digging my grave again.

Perfectionism is adaptive if you are mindful of your humanhood.

To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

I'd rather feel something for real than pretend it's not what it is. Which Zen guy said "If you want to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water"?

Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder.

It's so unfair that we should die, just because we are born.

Female sexuality is presented in our culture as a male fantasy, which doesn't include the reality of the abuse, the pleasure, the pain, the power, the complexity of women's sexuality.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

I am not one of these people who instantly takes umbrage when he's corrected or - I love being corrected.

We would do well to ask ourselves the kind of fundamental questions posed by [Buruma's] erudite and thought-provoking book.