“Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.”

“Time turns our lies into truths.”

“Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.”

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”

“There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.”

“When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.”

“People are too complicated to have simple labels.”

“I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

“I don't subscribe to labels. Unless I'm labeling other people.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”

“Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower ...”

“Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if o...”

“...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.”