“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.”

“[A writer] must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.”

“The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.”

“...it is a very risky thing for anyone to go about proclaiming the truth simply because he finds himself in possession of concrete documentary proofs or on the evidence of his own eyes, which is always overestimated.”

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”

“Rarely," said Dax to himself, "does a soldier see with naked eyes. He is nearly always looking through lenses, lenses which are made of the insignia of his rank.”