“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

You’re a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.

She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.

No matter how low you go, there’s always an unexplored basement.

Before you criticize others, remember, they may not have had the same opportunities in life as you have had.

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.

The ability to hold two competing thoughts in one’s mind and still be able to function is the mark of a superior mind

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

In fact, animal locomotion is no different than other flows

The designs we see in nature are not the result of chance.

it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.

They rise naturally, spontaneously, because they enhance access to flow.

The similarities among animals that are on the surface very different are no coincidence.

Flow systems have two basic features (properties).

With writing, I can express myself, really, and share my ideas and just let my thoughts flow out.

No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings – the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.