Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.