Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.

Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.

I worked so hard all my life, and all I want to do now is read.

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Silence is not our heritage but our destiny; we live where we want to live.

When I first read the words 'introvert' and 'extrovert' when I was 10, I thought I was both.