“To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.”

“Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.”

“Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ingoing.”

“Ai taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called go, an excellent difficult game.”

“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”

“Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.”