“The rules of the jungle did not apply to those who wrote the rules of the jungle.”

“We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.”

“...She was, in fact, often wrong--and knew it. Life became difficult when those who were often wrong did not know it.”

“Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels.”

“Dear friends, he began, there is no timetable for happiness; it moves, I think, according to rules of its own. When I was a boy I thought I’d be happy tomorrow, as a young man I thought it would be next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now.”

“She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It was far more likely that there would be love, falling like rain from above, changing the hearts of the wicked; transforming them”

“We do not like those who are completely available, who make themselves over to us entirely. They crowd us out. They make us feel uneasy.”