Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images.

Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.

The day is breaking someone else's heart.

Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.

At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw.

Class is classlessness.

The simplest science book is over my head.

But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.

In life, there are no perfect affections.

The idea of not being content with any level of success, doesn't by any means call for the absence of gratitude for your daily blessings.

Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves nor half the evil they say of others.

Spread those strong wings of yours. Fly.

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.

I don't think there's anything anybody's doing that the Beatles didn't at least try at some point.

India is scared of the competition... because Chinese goods will go into India and compete.

All was black, gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel - or if there was, it was an oncoming train.

Young people in general - and young women in particular - need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.

I don't see any elderly people in the crowd. Are there any old Dauntless? Do they not last that long, or are they just sent away when they can't jump off moving trains anymore?