Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.

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.

[T]he experience of mystery comes not from expecting it but through yielding all your programs, because your programs are based on fear and desire. Drop them and the radiance comes. (16)

Abhorrence towards bitter circumstances and attachment towards sweet ones is the nature of agnan (ignorance of the self). Bitter and sweet will not exist if agnan (ignorance of the self) leaves.

Life is part of negative, and full of positive only wise knows it.

Never soar aloft on an enemy's pinions.

Even if you have to go through hell - go without hesitation.

I'm just trying to keep things simple, and just be a little more offhand and not get so deep into things. Enjoy what you got right now, because who knows what's going to happen tomorrow.

If you are not doing what your passion is, you are putting it on layaway.

The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor.

I'm such a technophobe.

I will be making films, and I'm going to keep working, no matter what I have to do. And I don't plan to ever ask for permission from anybody.