"Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time."

“No one wants a masterpiece knocking around when your own book is looking for attention.”

Source : "Better than Amis?". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2003.

“Restaurants want to be judged on their intentions - not the results.”

“Don't marry someone you would not be friends with if there was no sex between you.”

“A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.”

“If anything or anyone distresses you, think how you'll feel a week - a month - a year later. If you can imagine yourself being happy and peaceful then, why waste all that time? Be happy and peaceful now.”

“The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.”

Source : D. A. Carson (1996). “Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians”, p.73, Baker Books

“How much better if life were more like books, if life lied a little more, and gave up its stubborn and boring adherence to the way things can be, and thought a little more imaginatively about the way things might be.”

“Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead.”

Source : Shirley Hazzard (2016). “We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think: Selected Essays”, p.67, Columbia University Press