“The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.”

Life doesn’t have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

One must always try to see the truth of a situation – it makes things universal.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over.

People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.

After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

But everything of value about me is in my books.

Making a book is such a big enterprise.

Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.

The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

Just like the moon. Keep glowing even when darkness is consuming you.

There always a little light in the darkness.

See between the darks of night, stars always emit their brightest shine.

The brighter the light, The darker the shadows. The more the lights, The more the number of shadows.

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

Positive energy brings good feelings, and dark energy often means harm.

If the world grows darker, our light shines brighter.