A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Of course I loved books more than people.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.

When did you stop caring? he asked.When did you start noticing? she replied.

Christ's vast benevolence must, from the very nature of things, have afforded Him the deepest possible delight, for benevolence is joy.

I like to work with artists who are as wide in their musical taste as I am.

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree

The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.

Larry [Kramer] had already experienced so much loss by then from the AIDS epidemic. But I don't think it changed anything between us.

[nonviolence] seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.

Everyone's relationships are very different, and very specific. I guess that's why there are people that like to watch this show [Suits]. It's not all the same.

We were not sent by Father in Heaven just to be born. We were sent to endure and return to Him with honor.