History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.

There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving.

We are most alive when we're in love.

...hate suits him better than forgiveness. Immersed in hate, he doesn't have to do anything; he can be paralyzed, and the rigidty of hatred makes a kind of shelter for him.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.