All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

Most crime fiction, no matter how 'hard-boiled' or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.

We all know it's safer to beat up on people who won't retaliate, ' he told her, 'but it's a quick way to lose friends. You need to find ways of dealing with confrontation when it happens.

Every problem is a new puzzle to be solved.

The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.

When there is time, there has to be suffering. Because in time there's desire and attachment and transition. This is the world of experience.

There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything.

Language is what stops the heart exploding.

You can change things, you can make things better.

The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.

It's not about who's got powers, morons. It's about who's not afraid. And who's going to do what has to be done.

She didn't know there were things worse than selfish.