“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it.”

We read books to find out who we are.

All knowledge is local, all truth is partial. No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge.

Listen.’ For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat… where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.

Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight.

If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.

Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it.

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.

I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.

Hope is a slow business.

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to unbuild walls.

We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

An ancient buddha said, “Mountains are mountains; waters are waters.” These words do not mean mountains are mountains; they mean mountains are mountains.

If we live our lives as a gift it is possible to reach a blissful state of eternal happiness. It is those who live their life with a sense of entitlement that undermine peace , freedom and liberty.

It’s complicated.’ ‘So’s quantitative easing. But I still get that it means printing money.

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys.

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.

Being a hero doesn’t mean you’re invincible. It just means that you’re brave enough to stand up and do what’s needed.