How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination... If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.

You can't test courage cautiously.

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.