Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.

No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.

...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)

People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.

Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.

The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.