You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires.

You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.

When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.

Real data is messy. ...It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it.