Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.

Walk free from the long shadows cast by small people.

What I am interested in, what I write and care about, exists in the slow lane, somewhere between hand-ploughed fields and a pint of real ale.

Eyesight can be so blinding. We need to look beyond the face of things.

There’s no such thing as writer’s block, so long as you’ve had plenty of time to think about what you want to write.

The process of creation begins way before one starts writing.

I needed some space to lay myself out, so that I could decide which pieces I wanted to pick up.

Imagination is the real magic that exists in this world. Look inwards, to see outwards. And capture it in writing.

A consultant: someone brought in to build a one-handled wheelbarrow.

Sentiments, as I have found, can be harvested from places where our memories are fondest.

If we have faith, then we can see the beauty around us. If we don’t then we are just blind followers, not knowing why we are on the path.

The truth will set us free. But freedom is cold and empty and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful.

I’ve never done this before. I didn’t go to human bars. Mudslides aside, I’m not much of a drinker. Club people are not my people. Now, book-club people—

Midway upon the journey of our life

There is only one person an English girl hates more than she hates her elder sister; and that is her mother.

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

42% of college graduates never read a book after college.

Money don't rule me, record companies don't rule me.

By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American.

The right things to do are those that keep our violence in abeyance; the wrong things are those that bring it to the fore.

When the saint ceases to seek after holiness, purity, righteousness, truth; when he ceases to pray, stops reading the Word and gives way to carnal appetites, then it is that Satan comes.