I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

There is no unique picture of reality.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Life is our dictionary.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know. There’s no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.