“The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.”

Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.

Well, we think that time “passes,” flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see.

The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself.

To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own.

A panda walks into a tea room and ordered a salad and ate it. Then it pulled out a pistol, shot the man in the next table dead, and walked out.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness.

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.

Life–evolution–the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy–existence itself–is essentially change.

The world is in balance . To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

Devotion to God is still a voluntary thing; hence the differences of attainment among Christians.

Can we today measure devotion to husband and children by our indifference to everything else?

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

One single act done with aridity of spirit is worth more than many done with feelings of devotion.

He who is devout to the Virgin Mother will certainly never be lost.

The words I speak, the things I do, let them be only, all for you.

Our body is a vessel of corruption; it is meant for death and for the worms, nothing more! And yet we devote ourselves to satisfying it, rather than to enriching our soul, which is so great that we can conceive nothing greater – no, nothing, nothing!

Every vocation becomes more agreeable when united with devotion.