Anyone who finds himself incapable of grasping the complexities of a work hides his withdrawal behind the most superficial pretext because he has not gotten past the surface.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

(memory is) A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation.

The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

The more a book is like an opium pipe, the more the Chinaman reader is satisfied with it and tends to discuss the quality of the drug rather than its lethargic effects.

Strive to become the best version of your original self. That's where your true fulfillment in life lies.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

I don't mean to be a racist but if you're going to get raped by a Japanese guy, it's not going to hurt at all.

I have a master chief that always said, punch and run.

Who stops learning may be old.

God... Please keep my eyes focused on the only target worth hitting - Christlikeness!

I prefer the word aviatrix. It has more zing to it." "It's very zingy," I agreed.

What we suffer for is enriched by our suffering until it becomes priceless.

Before I got Doctor Who, I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I went back to take the final grade exam, which is the grade you have to take before you can take the teachers diploma.