One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.

Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.

There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.

Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.

I have seen lonely people of advancing age, yet as constant as angels, keeping faith to those they loved who fell in wars that current generations, not having known them, cannot even forget. The sight of them moving hesitantly among the tablets and crosses is enough to break your heart.

Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.

All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.