Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

You love someone, you've got to let something go.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

If your feet are firmly planted on the ground you'll never be able to dance.

I want to rip the rest of those buttons open and climb him like a monkey in a banana tree. Oh God, what I would do with his banana...

Interestingly, people often boast that they are hard workers not understanding that hardworking means spending a lot of time and energy on work.

Success is not an accident, it's a result of the choices we make, based on principles we believe in..

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.

If people want safer streets, they want police supported, then they should vote for Donald Trump because that's what he'll do.

There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory.

The ability to understand and deliver comedy and tragedy is extremely rare in one composer.

He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.