And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.

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.

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.

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.

I wrote "David" because it seemed to me that children, who can love a book more passionately than any grown person, got such a lot of harmless entertainment and not enough real, valuable literature.

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

When you set a goal, you have a responsibility to yourself to see it through. No matter how impossible it may seem, resolve to accomplish it.

Perhaps it's the people whose lives have taken sudden new twists - people who have learned to embrace the creative possibilities of change - who stand the best chance of penetrating life's mysteries.

Sometimes, that mountain you've been climbing, is just a grain of sand.

The best way to fight evil is to do some good. Let me qualify that—the best way to fight evil at home is to do some good. The best way to fight them abroad is to unleash the military.

Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.

When love congeals It soon reveals The faint aroma of performing seals, The double-crossing of a pair of heels. I wish I were in love again!

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.

I got a voodoo doll every time I pen a verse: Not only do they say they feel it, but they say it hurts.