“There's nothing like a re-creation of the event. Which is lucky. Think if one could fully remember perfume or kisses! How wearisome the reality of them would be!”

“He himself, Anthony went on to think, he himself had chosen to regard the whole process as either pointless or a practical joke. Yes, chosen. For it had been an act of the will. If it were all nons...”

“Mother used to say that however miserable one is, theres always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.”

“We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them.”

“I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in ...”

“Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.”

“We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.”

“We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.”

“Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.”

“What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.”

“On the morning of November 22nd, a Friday, it became clear the gap between living and dying was closing. Realizing that Aldous [Huxley] might not survive the day, Laura [Huxley's wife] sent a teleg...”