An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.

And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.

Many are the stories I have heard about myself. I have mistresses I have never met. When I hear that I am a sodomist and a zoophalist then I shall know that I have reached the high point of fame, but I suppose I can hardly expect such exaltation for many years.

for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.

I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?