“What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.”

“Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being "not even wrong." Most so-called spiritual discourse is of this type.”

“What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.”

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is ...”

“It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and ...”

“It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory”

“Things will get easier, people's minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”

“The power to compel is not the same thing as leadership, and one does inspire the other. You are not a leader, Walters, you are a bully and a coward of the worst kind. the fear you believe you insp...”

“If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate.”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“Don't pity this sinful world!Just pity those who made it so!”

“People are always doing things for my sake and strangely enough, I'm the one who suffers for it.”

“Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.”