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.

All knowledge is partial, infinitesimally partial. Reason is a net thrown out into an ocean. What truth it brings in is a fragment, a glimpse, a scintillation of the whole truth.

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

Growing up during World War II certainly affected my whole view of life, but I hardly know how, it goes so deep. What's hard to explain now is that, though we were never invaded, and bombed only once and ineffectively on the coast of Oregon, everybody in the country was in that war. Everything we did was influenced by it - eating, traveling, dressing, thinking - everything in daily life.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. 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. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance.