There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

Recently abandoned women can be complicated.

faith gaped at him"how the hell did you do this?" He looked at her as if she'd asked the dumbest question in history. "I'm brilliant.

I guess sometimes the greatest memories are made in the most unlikely of places, further proof that spontaneity is more rewarding than a meticulously planned life.

Nothing is respectfully amazing than a man who finds no shame to tell the world how grateful he is for all the love and sacrifices his woman made..

The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

We are born with only one face, but laughing or crying, wisely or unwisely, eventually we form our own.

There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being.

Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

To me, these biblical stories are just so many fish stories, and I'm not specifically referring to Jonah and the whale. I need indisputable proof of anything I'm asked to believe.