“Imagine using as an authority in the matter of marriage the opinion of a celibate priest!”

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

“Sheb being a theocracy was naturally ruled by the priests, and priests are naturally bigoted in favor of their own narrow creed, and intolerant of differences of opinion on theological matters. It’s really too bad that things are that way, but there you are: you have to take the world the way it is, not the way you would prefer it to be.”

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it”

“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”

“It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter.”

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

“For the poet, the imagination is paramount, and... he dwells apart in his imagination, as the philosopher dwells in his reason, and as the priest dwells in his belief … The imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.”

“[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.”

“The greatest lesson i have learnt from writing is that it doesn't matter what you write but your writing matters, your words need to be meaningful. Feel free to write your imagination and try to find the author hidden within you.”