“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made.

I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care?

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly?

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.

Meaning isn’t something we discover, it is what we bring to life, either by choice or by chance.

It is difficult to generalize about Islam. To begin with, the word itself is commonly used with two related but distinct meanings, as the equivalents both of Christianity, and Christendom.

For me, the meaning of life is pretty clear: Living things strive to pass their genes into the future.

The words lie on the page and the writer has an extended opportunity to imprint on his reader every meaning and nuance distilled from experience.