One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

William Maxwell’s my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for ‚The New Yorker‘ called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in ‚The New Yorker‘ in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did – about emotions and places.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

In the world of money and investing, you must learn to control your emotions.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.

There are a lot of ‚chicken Christians.‘ Chickens are generally afraid of life, and they seldom fly or reach their potential in life. And when a storm comes, all they seem to do is flap around the chicken yard, stirring up dirt and running to the chicken house.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

Some people love so hard that they can’t control those emotions when they’re at their deepest point.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Well, all comedy starts with anger. You get angry, and its never for a good reason, right? You know its not a good reason. And then you try and work it from there.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

Paris by night is a nightmare now. It is not a cliche anymore.

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

When you think about it, three of our biggest financial decisions in life are made at times of peak emotional excitement: deciding to get married, buying a home, and having kids.

Even Hubble hasn’t found yet the end of this universe, and we don’t know that it has any end.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

I have a wish. It as a fear as well – that in my end will be my beginning.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

It’s not easy being young. It’s hard to know what to do.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.