But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.

Courage and fear were one thing too.

This you may say of man - when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.

Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.

It was too nerve-wracking, a shocking spectacle, like seeing an old, calm friend go insane.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.