Nearly all novels are too long.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Once you get to know your neighbors, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.

Not much to look at, but as with all true beauty it is what's inside that counts.

Fiction has the ability to show us what we don’t know and what doesn’t happen.

Live deep instead of fast.

If you're always on time, it implies that you never have anything better you should be doing. -Kelsier

Nations, as well as individuals, must be virtuous and righteous if they desire to be stable, prosperous, and tranquil.

I don't like seeing people angry.

Ric Flair, you put me in this position. You named me the Legend Killer and after Tuesday, you will respect me.

I can't help but be a little more gun-shy and wary about people.

If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.