“The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.”

“I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.”

“I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know).”

“In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.”

“...Men do not sufficiently realizethat their future is in their own hands.Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not.Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live,or intend to make just the extra effort requiredfor fulfilling, even on this refractory planet,the essential function of the universe,which is a machine for the making of gods.”

“The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.”