Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will, whether we want to or not.

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.

At the pit's bottom is no anger.

A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

If you want to know all about the sea ... and ask the sea itself, what does it say? Grumble grumble swish swish. It is too busy being itself to know anything about itself.

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.