How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.

...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.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.

I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you're 15, you tend to never lose it.