“Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disi...”

“The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideasto make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitra...”

“Theres no escaping it, hed been fond of telling us when he was well, the way you look defines who you are. You might argue for your soul, or your heart, but everyone else in the world will judge yo...”

“The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires...”

“None of it made any difference. The hollow feeling refused to go away. The next days were very hard. I found myself in the grip of a crippling ennui. I was back at square one, but I couldnt bring m...”

“I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they...”

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettie...”

“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ”

“The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.”