You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.

There is love in holding and there is love in letting go. Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures

Beauty is the only master to serve.

Some nights, we were a city of two.

We are what we are, Nial, neither as good or as evil as others paint us. And what we are doesn't change how truly we feel, only how free we are to follow those feelings.

Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.

Achilles exists only through Homer . Take away the art of writing from this world , and you will probably take away its glory .

Fame due to the achievements of the mind never perishes.

We are the hunters---and we are also the bait.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

Don't be gullible, use life before it uses you. Understand there are no free lunches, and for every action you take, there's a reaction.