“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

“When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just — his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

“There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? …Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

“People like you to be something, preferably what they are.” …AND NOW THIS ONE AGAIN – – – > “Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.” AND THIS – – – > “It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.”

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

“It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion.”

“It’s awful not to be loved. It’s the worst thing in the world…It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”

“There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.”

“No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.”

“Don’t you dare take the lazy way. It’s too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don’t let me catch you doing it! Now — look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do.”

“Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.”

“After a while you’ll think no thought the others do not think. You’ll know no word the others can’t say. And you’ll do things because the others do them. You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men…Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can’t finally give in, they’ll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside–neither part of themselves, nor yet free…They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can’t allow a question to weaken it.”

“It’s because I haven’t courage,’ said Samuel. ‘I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name – but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease. But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.’

‘I’d think there are degrees of greatness,’ Adam said.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Samuel. ‘That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other – cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He’s suffering over the choosing right now. It’s a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn’t that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness!”