…believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.

They spoke in semaphore, all punctuation unnecessary.“You?”“Great.”They’d trimmed the language to its essentials. Before long it would just be consonants. Then silence.

We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector, " said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?

They were home. He always felt a bit like a snail, but instead of carrying his home on his back, he carried it in his arms.

She taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained.

Rules meant order. Without them they’d be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.

Do you know the sums that I do?” “I count my blessings.

Do you know why we’re all happy here, monsieur? Because it’s the last house on the road.

We cannot let the future of our children be decided by their zip codes and family incomes.

If two people are so unalike, as you and I, they are pleased when they discover points of agreement. But if they are as alike as Nietzsche and I, they suffer from their differences.

I'll tell you what I think. I think you need to stay indoors reading more books!

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

If one is rich and one's a woman, one can be quite misunderstood.

the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.

You can't control a young horse unless you control yourself.

All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.

I don't know [what things are forever]. Friendship. I can think of lots of things.

Praise the child, and you make love to the mother.