Art is an artificial organization of experience.

We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.

If you tell people enough times that they are unhappy, incomplete, possibly insane and definitely selfish there is bound to come a grey morning when they wake up with the beginning of a nasty cold and wonder if they are lonely rather than simply “alone.”

Gardening gave me a way to work with silence; not "in silence" but "with silence" - it was a silent creativity.

Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call "meditation" or, in Christian terms, "contemplative prayer". It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.

My father taught me to be independent and cocky and free thinking, but he could not stand it if I disagreed with him.

Ian Watson did an almost full novel length treatment which I've never seen and when he finished it Stanley said to him. I need somebody to smear this with vaginal jelly, and I have to say when I first heard this that I was rather shocked, because he was quite gentlemanly.