This free-will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey and make the most of it.

Who cares about great marks left behind? We have one life... just one. Our life. We have nothing else.

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely.

At any given moment, I open my eyes and exist.

To believe in God is to know that all the rules will be fair, and that there will be wonderful surprises.

Everyone has, inside himself ... what shall I call it? A piece of good news! Everyone is ... a very great, very important character.

If we have anything kind to say, any tender sentiment to express, we feel a sense of shame.

Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber.

All of us are mad. If it weren't for the fact that every one of us is slightly abnormal, there wouldn't be any point in giving each person a separate name.

There is no forgiveness in nature.

Nature is honest, we aren't; we embalm our dead.

Before marriage a man prays that she accepts, after marriage a woman prays that he accepts

I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing for death and a constant rejection of life. She lived like darkness in her own day.

I know a lot of incredibly, profoundly talented, skilled people that aren't given certain opportunities or any opportunities, and that aren't working.

All arts his own, the hungry Greekling counts; And bid him mount the skies, the skies he mounts.

A man that will go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.

I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself.

There are prophets, there are guides, and there are argumentative people with theories, and one must be careful to discriminate between them.

And don't forget, Sherrod Brown is black. There's a racial component here, too. And now, the newspaper that I'm reading all this from is The New York Times, and they, of course, don't mention that.

While I was in Montrose, the publishing checks went into the band's coffers. This was our management's decision; we were just financing ourselves on the road.

Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.