From the stars we come, to the stars we go. Life is but a journey into the unknown.

The written word is redundant on the high seas. Why? Because paper gets wet too easily.

I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe.

Im as good as dead, but they haven't buried me yet.

Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they'd sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.

The problem is this: in order to make money- lots of money- we don't need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it.

A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen-and-a-half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest. A bear must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious.