May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

We weren't really friends yet, just knowers of each other's secret stuff.

The lie detector didn’t react to anything I said, but I wouldn’t dare smile.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

You are quite unnecessary, young man!

The committee has an obligation to give you a choice. The members have the obligation and the right to make that choice.

Writing a book is the most difficult, anxiety-prone aspect of my life because the words that I put on paper are very serious to me.

I've lived in worlds where there are three or four suns. We had incredible sunsets, beautiful. But they weren't more beautiful than here, if my mind is more beautiful in each life.

Marriage is a financial contract; I have enough contracts already.

Most people are alive in an earlier time, but you must be alive in our own time.

The whole point of the punk-rock thing was that "We're not special. We just have a voice."