“You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.”

Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

I remember that I’m invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.

My hole is warm and full of light.

I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.

It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause by yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others — playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Popularity has a bright side, it unlocks many doors. But the truth is that I don’t like it very much because it changes the private life into a very small thing.

If they are still standing by your side when your armor is off. When your walls are down. When your heart is broken. And your scars are visible. Tuck them into your arms like gold. And do not let them go.

Humility is like a pair of scales: the lower one side falls, the higher rises the other. Let us humble ourselves like the Blessed Virgin and we shall be exalted.

If you would fall into any extreme, let it be on the side of gentleness. The human mind is so constructed that it resists rigor, and yields to softness.

Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.