... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.

The creative adult is the child who has survived.

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to unbuild walls.

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

This is the worst thing about poisons and deadly sins - that we enjoy them.

If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune.

Mathematics to me is like a language I don’t speak though I admire its literature in translation.

The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else.

A man would rather be trampled by elephants on fire than tell you he's just not that into you.

Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.

I know I ain't too old. I always think of my fans about 10 years older and 10 years younger than me.

Every human being has the right to search for happiness, and by 'happiness' is meant something that makes other people feel content.

An image is always only showing what's necessary for a thought, not the thought itself.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.