When you talk of revolution ... you never talk of the day after.

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

Writers sometimes talk as though they were the only friends of civilization. This is their conceit. But they have special powers to serve -- or to corrupt -- civilization, and are obliged to use them.

As often as not our whole self...engages itself in the most trivial of things, the shape of a particular hill, a road in the town in which we lived as children, the movement of wind in grass. The things we shall take with us when we die will nearly all be small things.

If we are to survive on this planet, there must be compromises.

jealousy, the most hideous emotion any human being ever suffers, has nothing to do with the mind. Or not at first.

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