“Is that, in the end - that capacity to hurt - the most essential ingredient for a ruler?”

“There was something about words and music together that allowed people to get nearest to honest truth about what was most difficult to say. Paradoxically, only through the essential instantaneity of music could you approach its eternal pertinence.”

“A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask...A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?”

“Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home.”

“A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.”

“Happy endings are still endings.”

“I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.”