As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards, then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge, not a uniform you can’t take off.
Write something every single day, even if it’s just three lines. And it doesn’t matter if it’s any good – just write something every day.
These jokes the world plays, they’re not funny at all.
Hate eats the hater the way ogres eat little boys.
If war’s first victim is truth, its second is clerical efficiency.
Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.
Whoever opined “Money can’t buy you happiness” obviously had far too much of the stuff.
Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman.
We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.
One fine day a predatory world shall consume itself.
Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.
An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.
One cannot pass by without thinking of the density of men in the ground.
The rain’s innumerable hooves spatter on the streets and roofs.
The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes.
Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us at the speed of days and nights. And we call it love.
When insolvent, pack minimally, with a valise tough enough to be thrown onto a London pavement from a first- or second-floor window. Insist on hotel rooms no higher.
Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don’t respect cowards.
I really wish they hadn’t made the set out of asbestos.
In the 1970s and 1980s there was so little decent fiction for young people, but we’re now in a golden age that shows no sign of fading. Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket are only three of the best known among a good number of equals.