“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”

What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion but a way of life which produces, as in the mystics, an ecstatic awareness of the whole of life.

I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Tranquillity is contagious, peace is contagious. One only thinks of the contagiousness of illness, but there is the contagion of serenity and joy.

I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.

Passion gives me moments of wholeness.

The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into gold is love. The only magic against death, aging, ordinary life, is love.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.

We have been poisoned by fairy tales.

There are many self-help books by Ph.D.s, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A.-I’ve Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune.

The Law is for the proud and the Gospel for the brokenhearted.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Inherent to socialism is the absence of choice. If I want to choose my own pretzels or books or iphones, they prevent me – they fine me, or imprison me. And those systems, not infrequently have historically, have developed into systems where there are programs.

The fashion magazines are suggesting that women wear clothes that are ‘age appropriate.’ For me that would be a shroud.

Scripture is like a pair of spectacles which dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of God.

When the Bible speaks, God speaks.

Only those who have learned well to be earnestly dissatisfied with themselves, and to be confounded with shame at their wretchedness truly understand the Christian gospel.