Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but theremay never be two that love one another equally well.

When you're at war, you think about a better life; when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.

We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.

A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.

How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.

There is no creation without faith and hope. There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.