To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

...good words - that triumphalism of positivity- but life will claw and eat you - chew you over and over - if you carry such a small knife ...

If you're right at what you do There is no need to prove anyone That you are right

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

The people who had the most impact on me when I was young were Freud and Darwin, but growing up I also had my film idols.

The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride

There's a market for mysteries for adults. That feeling of opening a book and delving inside and not coming out until you've closed the book.

...the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

If you can raise money, you're never going to have trouble getting a job.

The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.

I'm not cynical about love at all. I'm very practical. I think love takes up a lot of time.