When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

The backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.

In war everybody is a prisoner.

The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women... women tend to eat less... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing.

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.