Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

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.

Higher income either indicates higher intelligence or lesser morals!

Love is the end of sympathy.

You desire that which exceeds my humble powers, but I trust in the compassion and mercy of the All-powerful God.

A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss

I was always going to be a dancer - I drifted into acting.

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

I'm not used to seeing the ball go wherever she wants. As a pitcher, I like to be - I don't want to say perfect, but I want to know what the ball is going to do.

We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.

Heaven, they say, protects children, sailors, and drunken men; and whatever answers to Heaven in the academical system protects freshmen.

For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.