“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple”

“… my dear friend Poverty, nurse of philosophy”

“I had been in the ditch for 2 and a half min. I wondered if my friends missed me.”

“It’s the light, she thought. Everyone looks like a cutthroat by torchlight. No wonder they invented electricity.”

“I knew this feeling, the 2 a. m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.”

“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution… Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”

“Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.”

“My dear friend Yevtushenko has, I claim, an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet.”

“Imagine that Jesus died on the cross. But who will be immortal in this world, or are you not going to die too my dear friend?”

“I am the sunlight in the heart, the silver moonglow in the mind;
My laughter runs and ripples through the wavy tresses of the wind.
I am the fire upon the hills, the dancing flame that leads afar
Each burning-hearted wanderer, and I the dear and homeward star.”