"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five."

"Money and power by themselves are a two-legged stool — you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over."

"I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better."

"Life seemed nearest to acceptable at four a.m."

"You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago."

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."