The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.

One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend

Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.

- Da, e lucru îngrozitor să cazi în mâinile răului reîncarnat. - Atunci, întreabă doctorul Poole, de ce continuați să-L venerați?- De ce arunci mâncare unui tigru care mârăie?Ca să câștigi un moment de respiro. Ca să amâni oroarea inevitabilului, fie și pentru câteva minute. Și pe Pământ e la fel ca-n Iad - dar cel puțin ești tot pe Pământ.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

There were the years— years of childhood and innocence— when I had believed that carminative meant— well, carminative. And now, before me lies the rest of my life— a day, perhaps, ten years, half a century, when I shall know that carminative means windtreibend.