For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.

I think you can tell when you meet someone whether they read novels. There's some hollowness if they don't.

Cheat, defeat, repeat.

Man can be an atheist only in theory, not in practice, because the universe is too frightening and too chaotic to be too independent!

If people can construct a simple and coherent story, they will feel confident regardless of how well grounded it is in reality.

Life is about change, it never stops, it's moving and it's moving this human body inexorably towards its demise.

When you’re in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to keep your pride. It’s a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find the balance.

They make money the old fashioned way... they earn it.

The savor of wandering in the ocean of deathless life has rid me of all my asking: As the tree is in the seed, so all diseases are in this asking.

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.

Nemo tam divos habuit faventes, Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri. Nobody has ever found the gods so much his friends that he can promise himself another day.