Lord knows why they depict death with wings when death is everywhere.

We are finally living in Plato's cave, if we consider how those who were imprisoned within the cave - who could do nothing but watch those shadows passing on the back wall - were convinced that those shadows were their one and only reality. I see a profound similarity to all this in the epoch we're now living in. We no longer live simply through images: we live through images that don't even exist, which are the result not of physical projection but of pure virtuality.

If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life.

What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?

We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever.

...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow.

Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.