“Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.”

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

If you can’t be yourself, what’s the point of being anyone else?

If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

[John D. Rockefeller] didn’t care about anyone he did anything just to be rich and be the only company standing without any competition. He destroyed anyone else.

Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.

We have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone.

I motivate others by making sure that they understand to go after their dreams and dont let anyone tell you you cant. If you are motivated enough and put the work in that you can achieve anything in life that you set your mind to.

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

Anyone who spends time on the road knows there’s something special about being in the middle of Utah or Nebraska – you sit with it, and there’s a peace about it. You can go left or right, and it opens up all kinds of doors. You take your own path.