There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

there are times when you have to speak because silence is betrayal.

That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.

If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.

Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.

Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.