Is it possible to say "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November" without feeling like Snoopy?

He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.

Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.

We like lists because we don't want to die.

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.

To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.