The complex develops out of the simple.

The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain.

Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.

It seemed perfectly possible that, in spite of my certainty of my own genius, I might die of some illness, or perhaps even in a street accident, before I had ever glimpsed the meaning of life. My moods of happiness and self-confidence convinced me that I had a "destiny" to become a famous writer, and to be remembered as one of the most important thinkers of the century.

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

I have a strong antipathy to everything connected with gardens, gardening and gardeners. . . . Gardening seems to me a kind of admission of defeat. . . . Man was made for better things than pruning his rose trees. The state of mind of the confirmed gardener seems to me as reprehensible as that of the confirmed alcoholic. Both have capitulated to the world. Both have become lotus eaters and drifters.