Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.

The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.

Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.

Man was designed in a way in which he must eat in order to give him a solid reason to go to work everyday. This helps to keep him out of trouble. God is wise.

Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.

Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns, And as the portal opens to receive me, A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts Tells of a nameless deed.

She gave up beauty in her tender youth, gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways; she covered up her eyes lest they should gaze on vanity, and chose the bitter truth.

Like all security, privacy is hard.

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

Ah woe is me, through all my daysWisdom and wealth I both have got,And fame and name and great men's praise;But Love, ah! Love I have it not.

The finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.

The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history.

How did people do this - swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had.