In a total work, the failures have their not unimportant place.

Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.

The tragic thing about learning from experience is I fear that one can only learn from one's own experience. Other people's - other nations' - experiences simply do not help. They can be imaginatively learned from. But people do not act on other people's experiences.

I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

It is harder for women, perhaps to be 'one-pointed,' much harder for them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented... the cry not so much for a 'a room of one's own' as time of one's own. Conflict become acute, whatever it may be about, when there is no margin left on any day in which to try at least to resolve it.

all great people are humble because great people have great work and are humbled by the largeness of their dreams.