“There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.”

The wind is us– it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning. Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it’s always nice to know where you’re going is my theory.

Really being friends is the most important part, I think, of any relationship.

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends.

Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.

It’s better to look at the sky than live there.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.

How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc – it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

Next time they are cruel to you, listen carefully, and if you listen you will hear their pain and just like that see their heart.

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.

There is no compassion for those who lack compassion.

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.

I’m kind because I know how cruel feels.

Heaven help the man who kicks the man who has to crawl.

The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.