Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away--

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it. Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to behave in a way that is for the benefit of the whole community.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.