I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

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.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it.

There are the stars--doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings out there. Just chalk... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. Strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.