“It is believed that knowledge can automatically change the personality, that is, the more you know, the more likely that you will change yourself. But this is false faith. If certain knowledge is not mentally “absorbed” – there is no significant difference in your vision before and after its existence, this means that you do not yet know this. This is a simple automatic brain-act, similar to the cognitive processes that occur in the artificial brain of computers. True knowledge occurs only when you feel that you already know it. Without this feeling, your brain does not hold any true knowledge.”

“I can kill a bad guy, but I can’t save anyone. I’m not a hero. All I am is a killer. A dead killer who shit his pants.”

“The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the “only real subject,” the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established on the European scene. Away from the novel, in our real lives, we know very little about our parents as they were before our birth; we have only fragmentary knowledge of the people close to us: we see them come and go and scarcely have they vanished than their place is taken over by others: they form a long line of replaceable beings. Only the novel separates out an individual, trains a light on his biography, his ideas, his feelings, makes him irreplaceable: makes him the center of everything.”

“If you want to meet your fate in life you must start from where you are. You cannot start by first wanting to know your fate, for fate is not a rigid course from which there can be no deviation – it is instead a wondrous journey of possibilities; each possibility bringing its own challenges and knowledge.”

“For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; …”

“Women particularly should concern themselves with peace because men by nature are more foolhardy and headstrong, and their overwhelming desire to avenge themselves prevents them from foreseeing the resulting dangers and terrors of war. But woman by nature is more gentle and circumspect. Therefore, if she has sufficient will and wisdom she can provide the best possible means to pacify man.”

“We all face different challenges in life. But we all have an equal choice to move forward.”

“Rene Caron takes my breath away!”

“He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.”

“You two were in a cave together?’ said Miss Simpkins in horror.‘Yes,’ said Kate, ‘and it was very, very dark.”

“It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled thoughts that clutter my mind and bookshelves, then maybe I can explain what happened. Maybe the worlds I have inhabited for the past seven years will assume order and logic and wholeness on paper. Maybe I can tell my story in a way that is useful to someone else.”

“One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.”

“When we sense something, it is due to the movement of atoms in space. When I see the moon it is because “moon atoms” penetrate my eye.”

“I want to see thirstIn the syllables,Tough fireIn the sound;Feel through the darkFor the scream.”

“Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don’t. It’s like learning a foreign language: You can think about the words all you want, but you’ll never be able to speak it until you suck up your courage and say them out loud.”