from the Notebooks: Proportion

The only thing that's eternal is the Truth. But that's what we're all frantically trying to dance away from. It's under our feet always, like red hot coals.

It is impossible to say anything new. But there is always the possibility that one might convey some old idea to somebody who hasn't previously encountered it.

It does no good to want very little if every little thing you don't get becomes magnified thereby into something huge.

Even light could travel faster, if it had courage.

As you are, your essential self is defined by that which will keep you out of heaven; that which will get you in is a minimum expectation.

The Truth is a rough and awkward thing. It is jagged with splinters and spiked with nails. You'd therefore best not pick it up, if you're a lover of smooth things.

All the grand palaces of my youth are seen today as drafty shacks.

The choices you make in life don't necessarily decide your fate; but they inevitably justify it.

I am an American, and I truly believe that I could have been anything that I wanted to be. But I didn't want to be anything. Now, here I am: a complete success.

Not the priest, but the saint; not the criminal, but the revolutionary; not the technician, but the artist; not the doer, but the maker.