“I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness – to save oneself trouble.”

Until one looks back on one’s own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

Fiction is founded on truth unless things did happen, people couldn’t think of them.

There are questions that you don’t ask because you’re afraid of the answers to them.

I learned that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back – that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one way street, isn’t it?

Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time thewish to kill-though not the will to kill.

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave – our own self. Get on good terms with that companion – learn to live with yourself.

Very few of us are what we seem.

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming… suddenly you find – at the age of 50, say – that a whole new life has opened before you.

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.

Books are a habit-forming drug.

If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don’t give a damn.

There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.

Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities.

The use of self-control is like the use of brakes on the train. It is useful when you find yourself in the wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right.

She is the lighthouse that guards the ship, the shore, the sea of his life, without her, there is no him.

If your drive, direction, and destiny are bigger than your current environment, build your own damn environment.

Your imagination gives your dreams a direction!

Sometimes you have to chop off the dead ends so that you can continue To grow in a healthy direction.

The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity.

In every storm you were the lighthouse, the direction in which to swim. so i grew strong a good swimmer and made it to your rocky shores.