When people say of their tragedies, 'I don't often think of it now,' what they mean is it has entered permanently into their thoughts, and colors everything.

It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.

Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization.

There is balance in life, but not fairness.

It is the impulse of our century, with its nearly religious belief in magnitude, to fling an institution into every void.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.

Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.

In thoughts one keeps a reserve of hope, in spite of everything. You cannot say good-bye in imagination. That is something you can only do in actuality.

Human beings need unhappiness at least as much as they need happiness.

There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'

Animal experiments are no joke. Thank goodness scientists are finding better, more humane ways to develop treatments for cancer and other killer diseases.

The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.

We're all self-made men, but not very many of us have stayed on the job.

Development seems to have become the agenda only of government. It is seen as a scheme. That should not be the case. Development should be everyone's agenda. It should be a people's movement.

There was a nobility in poverty when I was growing up. My mom was poor but she was planting roses and she was cleaning the steps, you know what I mean. You didn't feel sorry for yourself.

I want justice to be upheld. I want all-out diplomacy.

Quantum fiction is any story that witnesses life and the human experience on a subatomic level.