The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.

You have to be careful who you let define your good.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.