I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

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.

Them lady poets must not marry, pal . . . It is a true error to marry with poets / or to be by them.

The faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyone

So you interrupted my date to make fun of me for still living with my parents. Couldn't you have done that on a night I didn't have a date? That's most nights, in case you're curious.

Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.

Learn to lead in a nourishing manner. Learn to lead without being possessive. Learn to be helpful without taking the credit. Learn to lead without coercion.

I had to come up with some criteria to help me; i.e., what the favor was, if it was legitimate, if it was in no way compromising, and if there would be a benefit some way by my participation.

You have the ability to give so much to the world by emitting feelings of love and well-being, despite what is happening around you.

One of life's regrets is that you didn't always tell the truth, and now it's too late, because the truth has changed.

People are messy; therefore, relationships will be messy. Don't be surprised by messiness.

A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.