You must know nothing before you can learn something, and be empty before you can be filled. Is not the emptiness of the bowl what makes it useful? As for laws, a parrot can repeat them word for word. Their spirit is something else again. As for governing, one must first be lowest before being highest.

The dear girl, I fear, may be contemplating some alarming, disruptive perhaps dangerous project. In which case, I would naturally do all in my power to keep her from any such rash or foolhardy enterprise – unless she wished me to accompany her.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

You know how chickens are, imagining the world coming to an end one moment, then pecking corn the next.

After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.

Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don't forget to put out your nets!

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.