“In Bali life is a rhythmic, patterned unreality of pleasant, significant movement, centered in one’s own body to which all emotions long ago withdrew.”

Blackberry winter, the time when the hoarforst lies on the blackberry blossoms; without this frost the berries will not set. It is the forerunner of a rich harvest.

The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one’s mind.

Women have an important contribution to make.

Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.

Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.

Through a grandmother’s voice and hands the end of life is known at the beginning.

There is no lonelier person than the one who lives with a spouse with whom he or she cannot communicate.

Don’t depend on governments or corporations to fix problems. Social revolutions are led by passionate individuals and that’s what makes the difference.

The way in which each human infant is transformed into the finished adult, into the complicated individual version of his city and his century is one of the most fascinating studies open to the curious minded.

One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary. to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.

You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don’t like.

We grow up never questioning that which is unquestioned around us.

Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.

One should read Borges more.

It is no use lying to one’s self.

in love: a momentary instance of bein almost interested in someone else as in oneself!

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.

Oh courage, oh yes! If only one had that. Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.

I’m an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.

The costliness of keeping friends does not lie in what one does for them, but in what one, out of consideration for them, refrains from doing.