Even death after a long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. ... Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today?

I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you.

Only the impossible is worth the effort.

When we say we can pull resources away from libraries, from culture, from those parts of the education system that are not about utility, what we are really saying is that the life of the mind is unnecessary.

I've never been tempted by God but I like his trappings.

What a strange world this is when you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo.

When people looked at him they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not shut them out. He shut himself in.