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

My father ran London Films. He made films like 'The Red Shoes,' 'The Third Man.' And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children.

They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance.

To see the beauty of the world is to put your hands on lines that run uninterrupted through life and through death. Touching them is an act of hope, for perhaps someone on the other side, if there is another side, is touching them, too.

The human race is intoxicated with narrow victories, for life is a string of them like pearls that hit the floor when the rope breaks, and roll away in perfection and anarchy.

In daily life language is important, if not in itself, then as a symptom.

I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn't get him anything other than a living