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'Do you hate me, James?' [Margaret] said.
Dixon wanted to rush at her and tip her backwards in the chair, to make a deafening rude noise in her face, to push a bead up her nose. 'How do you mean?' he asked.

Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens like [his paper], but his own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance. 'In considering this strangely neglected topic,' it began. his what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? his strangely neglected what? His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to his own typescript only made him appear a fool.

I don't believe in any reality. I don't believe that this road and sky are real. I don't believe that the invisible worlds behind this road and sky are any more real than they are! Dreams within dreams! Everything is as I myself create it. I am the wretched demiurge of the whole spectacle.... Alone ... alone ... alone! If I create loveliness, there is loveliness. If I create monstrosity, there is monstrosity.

Nothing is against nature. That's the mistake people make; and it causes endless unhappiness.

It was as though he had suddenly emerged, by some hidden doorway, into a world entirely composed of vast, cool, silent-growing vegetation, a world where no men, no beasts, no birds, broke the mossy stillness; a world of sap and moisture and drooping ferns; a world of leaves that fell and fell for ever, leaf upon leaf....

Something about that silver on the sideboard, combined with his sister's news, threw a grey shadow over his own life. His mind sank down into a desolate acceptance of long years of stark endurance, the sort of endurance that wind-blown trees have to acquire when their branches become at last permanently bent, from bowing sideways, away from the north or east.

The [horses] looked so powerful and so contemptuous beside the stablemen who led them that Wolf, as he approached this procession, saw for a moment the whole human race in an inferior and ignominious light—saw them as some breed of diabolically-clever monkeys, who, by a debased trick of cunning, had been able to reduce to servitude animals far nobler and more godlike than themselves.

'I'm nothing,' he mumbled almost incoherently. 'I'm nothing. But don't you know,' he said, seizing Wolf's hand in his dirty, feverish fingers, 'don't you know that love sinks down into the roots of the whole world? Don't you know that there are ... levels ... in life ... that .... that ... defy nature?'

Mr Urquhart chuckled. 'Do you know what I've thought?' he said. 'I've thought that I'd like to get the sort of perspective on human occurrences that the bedposts in brothels must come to possess—and the counters of bar-rooms—and the butlers' pantries in old houses—and the muddy ditches in long-frequented lovers' lanes.'

No one would think that a foreign woman had dared to venture on that road. No one would ever suspect the pilgrim tramping over these distant tracks on which a white traveller was never seen. The feeling of security was a great comfort and allowed me to enjoy the charm of my adventure more freely.

Besides being prompted by their natural kind-heartedness, Thibetans are always ready to direct a wayfarer because such an act is considered by them as highly meritorious and bearing good fruits in this life and the next one.

Wrong was right and right was wrong, and everything was made of paper: sentences, pardons, pleas, bad records, demerits, proof of guilt, but never, it seemed, proof of innocence. If there were no paper, Carter felt, the entire judicial system would collapse and disappear.

It was 3:35 p.m., Tuesday afternoon, in the State Penitentiary, and the inmates were returning from the workshops.

Possibly there was a plan behind the travesties that followed, but I never unraveled it. Increasingly, I came to believe that Carlos [Castaneda] made everything up as he went. It was the only fitting explanation.

Tony is the only man to have been offered "successorship" [to Castaneda]. He declined, telling me years later that based on his knowledge of Mexican culture, he believed don Juan to be a fictional character. Thus Tony would be leading a group based on lies—something he did not view as "magical."

AZmy ... You have to give your poto to the nagual. For magical purposes, we must have a 'close encounter.' It's the only way left to us. The hole between a woman's legs is magic and when the nagual leaves his juice inside it goes directly to her brain ... It's the fastest way.

Of the billions of living things on earth, only man ponders his existence. His questions lead to torment; for he is unable to accept, as the insects do, that life's only purpose is life itself.

In the perfect society, there is neither emotion nor mercy; precious space cannot be wasted on those who have outlived their usefulness.

You feel that you are immortal, and the decisions of an immortal man can be canceled or regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the hunter, there is no time for regrets or doubts,. There is only time for decisions.

On the road to Cairo one may see twenty groups exactly like that of the Holy Family in the pictures of the Flight Into Egypt; with only one difference. The man is riding on the ass.

In the choice of a husband, a girl is guided by a sure instinct—she chooses for the future, her choice is towards a new development. She notices some trait or other about a man that may become an heirloom for her descendants.

Sport is kingly; a great many people of quality enjoy it, besides numbers of the lower orders. A fine gentleman, who has all that he can need for this world and the next, will walk out in peculiar clothes, to kill a little fluffy rabbit.

In the autumn, sickness gathers like the clouds, and many troubles, that the warmth of the summer has laid to sleep, revive again. Out of the damp places in the earth, out of the hollow tree in the wood, where the night-bird broods, stepping upon pale and stricken leaves, there come the imps of darkness to harvest their winter carrion.

But architecture is not a thing only that we have to live with -- it is a thing we have to live in. We live with it as Jonah lived with the whale. Jonah could not see the monster and there is a great deal to be said for living in the most hideous house you can see in the landscape. That is he one place where you will be unable to see it.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

And if Spain is the head of Europe, Portugal, set at its western extremity, where land ends and sea begins, is as it were the crown on the head. Righteous heaven willed that here the struggle with the miscreant Moslem should prosper exceedingly and end with his total expulsion; and now even on the burning sands of Africa he is allowed no peace.

As you see, I had yet to learn the art of compromise, I still thought that to get something you had to go straight for your goal, whereas it is only distractions, uncertainty, distance that bring us closer to our targets, and then it is the target which strikes us.

The people of Central Havana live on pure air. Nobody has dollars, and everybody's used to making do with sugar water, rum, and tobacco, and lots of beating on drums. That's the way it is. So long as we're still alive, we'll keep on putting one foot in front of the other no matter what. You've got to struggle to survive. The only sure thing in life is death.

I wasn't too bothered by the whole business. I hope I make it to eighty-three with a dream or twp intact, even if it's the foolish dream of finding myself a girlfriend and getting married, believing that love is possible and that poverty and hunger will soon be things of the past.

That's what I love about Cuban women, they're so sweet you can never say no when they ask you for something. It's not that way with European women. European women are so cold they give you a chance to say NO at every turn, and you feel good about it too.