What is a hero without love for mankind.
— Doris Lessing
Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.
Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.
Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.
I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.
