“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.”

Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?

How likely are definitions to be pleasurable.

As there was never any question there was never any answer.

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

Suppose no one asked a question. What would the answer be?

Honesty is a selfish virtue. Yes I am honest enough.

Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I do and I know when I succeed.

Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life.

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

This is the real thing of disillusion that no one, not any one really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing.

From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.

One must dare to be happy.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

It is inevitable when one has a great need of something one finds it. What you need you attract like a lover.

And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.

Maybe my life isn’t great. We don’t have all the answers. Look at it from my side.

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.

Sometimes if you have a difficult decisin to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.

They saw the flicker of bats overhead. They smelt the drifting scent of honeysuckle, and the delicious smell of wild thyme crushed under their bodies. A reed-warbler sang a beautiful little song in the reeds below, and then another answered.

The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer

I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.