Loving the ideal more than the reality is the cause of all the misery the human species creates for itself.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

Perhaps extreme danger strips us of all pretenses, all ambitions, all confusions, focusing us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we remember what we otherwise spend most of our lives forgetting: that our nature and purpose is, more than anything else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any of us as are the present and the past.

One door away from heaven And the key is ours to lose. One door away from heaven But oh, the entry dues.

Doubt is poison. It leads to a loss of faith in yourself, and in all that's good and true.

From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.

I never have lunch because it makes me foggy-headed.