the winter of our discontent

“A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.”

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders. (569)

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately. (576)

It's hard to know how simple or complicated a man is. When you become too sure, you're usually wrong. (634)

"I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen."

"When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something -anything - before it is all gone."

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” 

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.” 

“To be alive at all is to have scars. ” 

“We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent. ” 

“There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.” 

“For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.” 

“He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?” 

“You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.” 

“It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.”