The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.

--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn’t as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were their sons. It was our job to love them.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.