I have this fantasy. I'm walking past a bookshop and I click my fingers and all my books go blank. So I can start again and get it right.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!

All people have three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they have, and that which they think they have.

I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you.

You'll learn more from your accidents than anything that you could ever learn at school.

I'm a chronic relapser. I guess I always will be.

Growing up, my idols were Lucky Luke and Jolly Jumper. And Scottie Pippen.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

He had a happy canine way of seeking approval without seeming insecure.

I'd rather look good in my coffin than bad in my coffin.

It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.