. . . a statement that is repugnant to one's beliefs can be as true as one that is pleasurable.

It is a waste of money to help those who show no desire to help themselves.

I often reread books I have written

Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.

No woman has ever been an authentic genius of the stature of men, but that does not enrage me

One of my grandsons used to insist, when he was only 3 or 4, that he had been born and had lived in India