We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.

'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere 'lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation oа reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.

It only takes one match to ignite a haystack, or one remark to fire a mind.

after all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we really say we know about a man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh.

The realisation of one's own death is the point at which one becomes adult.

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.