I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she'd be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time.

As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?