Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a...

Life, here I come!’ he said. And was immediately and fatally run over by a bus.

Trapped. Sinking. Can’t be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone’s fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

You can put anything into words, except your own life

As soon as whatever provisional well of confidence dries up, I will feel like a frightened motherless child. And I will—what? Lessee, I’ll beg friends to assure me I’m fascinating, that my soul is complex...

Fukuyama’s thesis that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism may have been widely derided, but it is accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious. It should be remembered, though, that even when...

The newly-minted captain is told to let nothing stop him but to do nothing that would risk his ship or his crew.

God hides the fires of hell within paradise.

She walks in beauty.

That’s the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You’ll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and — in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth...

The Lethean Library, for all its incalculable volumes, is, I know, sadly incomplete without Mr. Goodman’s effort.

I have learned that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle...

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

We are dancing on our irony as upon the top of glowing sparks.

Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.

If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

I’ll be your Dostoevsky, if you’ll be my Tolstoy. Our life together will be so full of despair that death will be like a gulag full of joy.

We can get you a throne with snakes. I’ll stand next to you and roar at anybody who fails to grovel. Fear Kate Daniels. She is a mighty and terrible ruler. Grendel can anoint the...

I’m starting to feel like a character from one of these books

I live in my mind, such that whatever destroys me shall be a creature of my own invention.

Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could...

It’s the contradiction of life, if I were with them,I would only wish to be far away. Now that I am far away, all I do is wish for one more day surrounded by them

Maybe illusion and artifice—lies, even—are a necessary part of romance.

Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?”For fun?”Fun!’ He pounced on the word. ‘Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.

Chin up, and we’ll drown a little slower.

We always feel the brunt of the blow dealt to us, but hardly ever do we feel the impact we have on others. Why is that?

Mundane, boring stories–not interesting ones–are the ideal in an operating room.

Psst”he called.The Cyclops lowered his hammer. He turned towards Zeus, but his one big eye had been staring into the flames so long that he couldn’t see who was talking.”I am not Psst”The Cyclops said...

She came from the most worthless of classes – the rich, with a smattering of culture.

The irony of rule followers is they often quote a lot of people that do not follow as many rules as they do.