History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself...

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

If you are opportunity oriented, you will find opportunities all around you. If you are problem oriented, you will see problems all around you.

Every mind should reflect to touch the green of life through trees.

...[T]he mechanics of life should never be allowed to interfere with living.

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Rolling torture wagons for nature's most dignified creature.

Jesus Christ did not ask much from us, He did not demand that people climb Mount Everest or make great sacrifices. He just asked that we love one another.

How is it that we can militarily overthrow a military government like Iraq, yet we can't militarily keep illegalities (drugs and aliens) from crossing our borders?

The more perfect our means of direct experience, the more easily we are caught by the dangerous illusion that perceiving is tantamount to knowing and understanding.

The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death.

Achievement is not last, disappointment is not deadly: It is the mettle to proceed with that matters.