Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.

You swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, I can conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense.

The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows.

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.

If a man has no vices, he is in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there's a spectacle.

Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.