You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.

You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.

That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.

We shouldn't be afraid of the obvious, because stories are about life, and life is full of obvious things like food and sleep and love and courage which you don't stop needing just because you're a good reader.

He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren't very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject--what a burden his life was.

Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.