“It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

“It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.”

“The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?”

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”

“Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.”

“Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.”

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”

“Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events.”

“It is only when our consciences become tangled that the truth begins to hurt.”

“Infancy, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, 'Heaven lies about us.' The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.”