The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

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

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death.

I’m always just surprised when someone writes something about me.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

What we live by we die by.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I’ve got.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

In every parting there is an image of death.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

I look forward to death with great anticipation, to meeting God face to face.

If I died tomorrow, I would be a happy girl.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Because in a split second, it’s gone.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

A man’s character is his fate.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

I really have had to swallow my own prejudice at times.

Fate pulls you in different directions.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

Why am I here? I’m not lucky. That’s God.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.