“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.”

“Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.”

“Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.”

“History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.”

“What you haven't done by thirty you're not likely to do. What you have done you'll do lots more.”

“It comes to him: growth is betrayal. There is no other route. There is no arriving somewhere without leaving somewhere.”

“Neutrinos, they are very small.They have no charge and have no massAnd do not interact at all.The earth is just a silly ballTo them, through which they simply pass,Like dustmaids down a drafty hallOr photons through a sheet of glass.They snub the most exquisite gas,Ignore the most substantial wall,Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,Insult the stallion in his stall,And, scorning barriers of class,Infiltrate you and me. Like tallAnd painless guillotines they fallDown through our heads into the grass.At night, they enter at NepalAnd pierce the lover and his lassFrom underneath the bed—you callIt wonderful; I call it crass.”