It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.

There's nothing in the world like that first taste of beer.