And with a massive roar the fifth wall comes down and the house of fiction falls, taking Viola and Sunny and Bertie with it. They melt into thin air and disappear. Pouf!

They were lucky. They'd been given history.

Popular versus literary—a false divide?

All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in the imagination.And this one is Teddy's.

Oh, man, ‘the nursery, ’ ” Dominic said, “what a hell-hole. If I had kids I’d give them the nicest room in the house.”“You do have kids, ” his kid said.“Oh, yeah, well, right, you know what I mean.

If an author was a god, then he was a very poor second-rate one, scrabbling around in the foothills of Olympus.

was there a store somewhere full of unwanted secrets?

Secrets had the power to kill a marriage, she said. Nonsense, Sylvie said, it was secrets that could save a marriage.

Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.

You need to keep you mind at peace and be sure what you do is your passion.

When there's a monster under your bed sometimes it really is best not to look.

He covered my hand with his. "No matter what happens, we're friends first. I hope you know how much having you in my life means to me.

All oppression creates a state of war.

Going to Oxford didn't necessarily make a person clever.

If you don't pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don't begin with it.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

People think about life from day-to-day rather than thinking about life as something that invents a new kind of tomorrow.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

More than 10 million Americans are living with cancer, and they demonstrate the ever-increasing possibility of living beyond cancer.