In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

Thinking is harder work than hard work.

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.

Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.