The days were heavy and sticky. All identical, one the same as the other. Soon they would even get rid of their one remaining distinction, the shell of their names: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.

If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?

It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

And everything would be different, different.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

A mountaineer’s house, before being his home and the home of his family, is the home of God and of guests.

Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.

Can a country's people be better than its planes?

Can one move an empire as if it were a house?

Young adults rebel against the pre-invented/ packaged world, but sooner or later they stop and they also become proponents of the tried and true.

My faith is a tool I employ, a metaphorical context I find apt, but it is inert until placed in a hand that needs it.

I can't work on something if I don't believe in it. I love music, and I am inspired to work harder and spend more energy. I feel lucky that I was born with this passion.

I aim to be a competitive nation.

I hope that this year, you make mistakes. If you do, then it means you have tried, learned, lived, pushed yourself, changed you and your world, and most importantly, you've done something.

The grandest and simplest things contain worlds within worlds. Seeing them is a matter of the right point of view, and your painter's eye is the special portal to such sights.

A too-expected image (cliché) will never seem right, even if it is.

There's a cure for aging that no one talks about. It's called learning.

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.

I don't want little girls to have the same ambitions as me. But I want them to know that it's okay to be ambitious.