These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything, kept in check by a lively skepticism about everything.... It keeps you constantly alert to every possibility.

Nobody who looks as though he enjoyed life is ever called distinguished, though he is a man in a million.

Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.

One can always tell it's summer when one sees school teachers hanging about the streets idly, looking like cannibals during a shortage of missionaries.

The book forces itself into my mind when I am lugging furniture, or pulling weeds.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear. . .

Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.