Do you know what the best and worst thing about a book is? The author can't answer all your questions, only your imagination can.

The only thing better than a well-read book is a well-read book only read by yourself.

Reading for enjoyment won't die altogether, but this Ereader device has the potential to repel those less imaginative from fiction. And that could have an undesirable domino effect.

With a little bit of spirit in her system to help her weave the lies and facts together, Emily told the partial truth.

The only thing more interesting than the truth is fiction dressed up as the truth.

We go round and round trying to convince one another that our opinion makes more sense. And the only winner is time for making us look like fools by wasting it.

If that's the example you want set, you be the example.

I tried to kill myself when I was thirteen but failed. That was the greatest failure of my life.

Young lovers. If you get it right, it's amazing what you can share. The challenging part is maintaining it.

No one knows if something works until it actually works. That's why you must always try.

Fear doesn't gain respect. It just makes people do what you want to shut you up and get you away from them.

Effectiveness of love must be measured by concrete results

We all have the same pallet of emotional paints. It is how we pigment them on the canvas of life that dictates our artistry.

So there’s a freeing up that happens when I can go into that storytelling mode...It isn’t about how much sense you make, it is about how compelling you are. (interview)

Because I believe there is nothing so self-destroying, and no emotion quite so despicable, as jealousy.

the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.

Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

If you think I'm one of the people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong. I'm invariably illtempered in the early morning.

Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.

We wont develop until we accept that reading is a vital necessity.

Archetypes are always [in my film-making]. It's sometimes interesting to just flip them a little bit and see the underside.