Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?

Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. ...the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. [p. 68]