“when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world. ”

“We speak in (rich) monotones. Our poetry is haunted by the music it has left behind. Orpheus shrinks to a poet when he looks back, with the impatience of reason, on a music stronger than death.”

“What you don't know by heart you haven't really loved deeply enough”

“When a language dies, a possible world dies with it.”

“Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.”

“Books - the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity”

“The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.”

“At the age of 45, most days in Tucson were spent feeling like I was on the summit of Mauna Kea, as I was exhibiting debilitating health symptoms that corresponded to what I saw at very high altitud...”

“The hour is only long thus, if you've waited.”

“I am not saying that Hitler was a choir boy. But I am saying, let him who was innocent in the Second World War cast the first stone.”

“Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.”

“Pride is ugly. It says, 'If you succeed, I am a failure.'”

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired.”

“If we feel inwardly strong, we will have no need or desire to speak ill of others.”

“My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying.”