Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

You don't appreciate a faithful husband when you've got one, ' said Tommy.'All my friends tell me you never know with husbands, ' said Tuppance.'You have the wrong kind of friends, ' said Tommy.

Learn in good time to recognize disillusionment, so as to continue living your life according to the will of the Lord

The Bible is not an option

Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare They fall, and leave their little lives in air.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners.

The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough. You die before it’s ready and then your ghost pours the resurrection potion out of the moka pot.

Quitting is not an option. I will not let anyone on this team quit.

But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die.

There is a big cry in California to stop everyone from running to Canada.