At fourteen you don't need sickness or death for tragedy.

It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

At fourteen you don't need sickness or death for tragedy.

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.