A cult is a religion with no political power.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.

It was a couple of days before Kate Schechter became aware of any of these things, or indeed of anything at all in the outside world.
She passed the time quietly in a world of her own in which she was surrounded as far as the eye could see with old cabin trunks full of past memories in which she rummaged with great curiosity, and sometimes bewilderment. Or, at least, about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid, and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine-tenths were full of penguins, which surprised her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her own subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.

But what is the task of a grower? My Father wrote another Age, but I see that the tree is not a place, but a people — the heart of a people. That is what must grow.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others will not know we want to do them.

She felt in italics and thought in capitals.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Nothing is too small to know, and nothing is too big to attempt

Most people don’t take snapshots of the little things… the used Band-Aid… the guy at the gas station… the wasp on the Jell-O… but these are the things that make up the true picture of our lives. People don’t take pictures of these things.