For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind...

His parents called him Youngster. They did this in the subconcious hope that he might take the hint. Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of 47.

Once people are not here physically, the spiritual remains. We still connect, we can communicate, we can give and receive love and forgiveness. There is love after someone dies.

Strong professional communities risk and sometimes relish conflict.

There's nothing like a clown with a boner to remind you that you're having a nightmare.

Everybody sees things their own way, but putting it onscreen is a different story - you have to deal with production crews. That's what differentiates a good director.

I'm happy to feed the illusion that I'm a lazy recluse.

Marketers are out there trying to figure out how to get your money out of your child.

You've done the bourgeois thing, perhaps, but let's not call that love.

To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.