Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

Did you miss me?’“A little bit, ” she said with a shrug.“You have tears running down your cheeks, ” he said with a grin. “I think you missed me more than a little.

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

People think it's terribly sad to spend Christmas alone, but it's no sadder, really, than spending any other day alone, is it?

One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave.

Love's a thin Diet, nor will keep out Cold.

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.

For me, whatever age or size I've been, I have rather liked myself. The shell is not the thing at all.

The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.

Like all bullies, they’re cowards underneath the swagger