The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.

Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.

Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? Is that a crime? I countered, and they all laughed.

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.