Much arrogance is necessary equipment for an artist, I think. Not sufficient, but necessary. It carries one across the gaps.

Those who dislike fantasy are very often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars; they don't feel at home with them; they don't want complexities, remoteness. If there is any such connection, I'll bet that it is basically an aesthetic one

Yet we were rescued by that fancy, and saved by a myth.

Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced.

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

If you evade suffering, you also evade the chance of joy.

While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.