Civilization begins with distillation

'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was - only is.

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.