The hunger of the spirit for eternity - as fierce as a starving man's for bread - is much less a craving to go on living than a craving for redemption. Oh, and a protest against absurdity.

Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend fifty-nine minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread. . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is-a miracle and unrepeatable.

The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.

She did not so much cook as assassinate food.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.