Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.

War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Nothing beautiful can be summarized.

The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.

Love is being stupid together.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences.

That's what it means to be an American. To be free to love who and what you want, and to keep a lot in your heart at once.

Had pretended to be Abbadon of the Dark, when always he had been working for the Light.

The Bible appears to be the most revered book never read.

You live with your thoughts-so be careful what they are.

You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames.

I live way below my means.

For me, every hour is grace.

It took Sydney Pollack a long time to get me to do Tootsie. I asked myself if I wanted to play some frothy, ditzy character after I had just done Frances. Obviously, I'm thrilled that I did.

On the bright side," Percy said, "both Jason and I outrank you, Octavian. So we can both tell you to shut up.

We're all moving to a world where the forces of nature come closer together to technology.